PRIME minister Pedro Sanchez started the week after his summer holidays with a show of support for the people of Ceuta.
First, the government gave the green light to an urgent financial package worth €309 million that will be spent in Ceuta over the remainder of the year.
Sanchez also met with King Felipe VI and said the King will visit Ceuta in the coming weeks because there are ‘arguments’ and ‘the conditions are right’ for it.
The Royal Household has not yet confirmed the trip.
The show of support was set to culminate on Wednesday, as big rallies were organised across the country in solidarity with Ceuta.
But the slogans quickly turned against the government over its handling of the influx of migrants into the Spanish exclave and especially against Sanchez, who received the worst of the anger.
READ MORE: The day that Spain exploded in anger for Ceuta and its people after one month of crisis
Some called him ‘Pedro Sanchez hijo de puta’ (Pedro Sanchez, son of a b***h), while others demanded his resignation, shouting: ‘Sanchez, traidor, dimision.’
In Madrid, four people were arrested in front of congress and four police officers were injured.
According to the State Attorney General’s Office, slogans heard in Madrid, Jaen and Barcelona also became Islamophobic.
EFE, the Spanish news agency, even reported that flags and banners carrying Nazi, fascist and Francoist symbols could also be seen.
As fury spread around the country, our reporter Kirana Mostert covered a large gathering in Estepona, where some of the same slogans heard in Madrid resonated there among some others: “We are Spanish! We are Spanish! Ceuta is Spanish!”
READ MORE: The day that Spain exploded in anger for Ceuta and its people after one month of crisis
The calls for ‘dimision’ (resignation) also was heard in congress a day later, on Thursday.
That came after a police report added fuel to the fire by concluding that the massive entry of migrants was ‘planned’, in no case ‘spontaneous’, and was linked to members of Morocco’s security forces.
The report was submitted to Judge Maria Tardon and describes what happened in Ceuta on July 30 and 31.
The government is studying the police report and has urged ‘extreme caution’ before pointing the finger at Morocco.
Spain has good relations with Morocco, and Sanchez has fought hard to insist that the Moroccan government had nothing to do with the Ceuta incident.
But as the police report circulated through congress and across Spain’s main media, Vox leader Santiago Abascal called the prime minister a ‘traitor’ for ‘being at the service of Morocco as a servant.’
Opposition parties are also accusing the government of knowing about the incident beforehand and doing nothing to control it.
Junts spokesperson in congress Miriam Nogueras told Sanchez on Thursday that whether or not he was aware of the warnings about the mass entry of migrants on July 30 in Ceuta, ‘both options disqualify him from continuing to govern’.
During the plenary session of congress, Sanchez reiterated that he had not received any report or verbal note anticipating ‘either the scale or the probability’ of the massive entry of migrants into Ceuta at the end of July.
“It’s absurd to think that the government knew and did nothing,” Sanchez told parliament on Thursday.
Sanchez has recently accused countries including Israel and Russia of helping to instigate the incident on social media.
Backing up Sanchez’s accusations, foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares quoted his Ukrainian counterpart as saying that ‘Russian networks had been very, very active at that time.’
There are still around 5,000 migrants in Ceuta, among them 1,500 minors.
Now, eyes are turning to King Felipe VI’s anticipated trip to Ceuta and the financial support package intended to help bring calm back to the region.
But with opposition parties calling for Sanchez to resign, it remains unclear how the Government will safely put the incident behind itself after what began as a migration crisis turned into a major political challenge for the Government.
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