KING Felipe will visit Spain’s North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla this month.
The monarch will be accompanied by Queen Letizia on October 13 and 14.
It will be Felipe’s first trip to the enclaves during his 12-year reign and comes just over two months after more than 72,000 migrants surged into Ceuta from Morocco at the end of July.
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The last royal visit was made by Felipe’s father, King Juan Carlos in November 2007, which sparked a diplomatic crisis with Morocco.
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, last month urged Felipe to visit Ceuta in rare public comments on royal matters, saying the city needed to feel ‘supported by the state more than ever’.
The palace said the visit to Ceuta and Melilla ‘has been agreed by the government and the royal household’.
The Moroccan government has historically opposed Spanish royal visits to the two cities, over which it claims sovereignty and which it regards as occupied by Spain.
Ceuta and Melilla have been part of Spain since the 17th and 15th centuries, respectively.
King Felipe has mostly refrained from commenting publicly on the Ceuta crisis since it began, first mentioning the enclave two weeks ago to praise civil protection workers there.
But at an official dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday during his state visit to Spain, Felipe said European countries should have shown more solidarity with Madrid, calling the situation in Ceuta ‘unacceptable’.
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