Ada Colau, a candidate of Frente Amplio for the elections on November 29, has censured the performance of the socialist wing of the Government in the face of the migration crisis in Ceuta recorded in the first weeks of August, describing its management as “bad.” In addition, she has criticized President Pedro Sánchez for not traveling to the autonomous city after going on vacation, considering that when something “so serious evidently happens, you have to be there.”
“I think the first response that was given by the Government and specifically from the presidency was not the best,” Colau has criticized in an interview with the “youtuber” Jordi Wild, collected by Europa Press. Along these lines, the former mayor of Barcelona has said that she did not understand the way the Executive acted in August or why a “greater response” was not offered.
Colau has explained that Sánchez’s reaction struck her as striking because, in previous situations such as the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees due to the war in Russia in Ukraine, the Government acted differently. For that reason, she has defended that when the State sets out to do it, it has been shown that it “has the necessary resources” to “manage well a complex situation with thousands of people” and avoid the “alarm” that, as she has indicated, did indeed occur in Ceuta.
In this context, she has reiterated that the Executive’s performance was “bad management” “in August,” although she has acknowledged that “then” there was an improvement. In her view, in a crisis of this kind, the priority is to move to the affected territory and “mobilize resources immediately,” such as tents, food, or healthcare, to prevent the situation from “becoming entrenched” and for citizens not to perceive that they are “abandoned,” a feeling, she has insisted, “was the feeling that existed in the first moment.”
Review relations with Morocco
On the other hand, Colau has stressed that the migration crisis in the autonomous city would not have happened without Morocco’s approval and has also pointed to an indirect responsibility of the EU, which has chosen to outsource control of its borders and delegate it to third countries that can pursue other interests, in line with the United States or Israel.
“I think we all saw that Morocco, it’s obvious that it allowed that to happen, because with all the intelligence it has, with all the accustomed it is to controlling the border, 70,000 people do not move without the Moroccan government realizing,” she has maintained.
In this sense, it has stated that, if it were to reach Moncloa, it would review relations with the Maghreb country with the aim of advancing the guarantee of human rights and of depending "as little as possible on a regime" with which it disagrees and with which, moreover, Spain has maintained tensions over Western Sahara.
Asked why specific measures it would take against Morocco, Colau replied that it would be "reckless" to detail specific initiatives now without being part of the Executive, and it has defended that any decision must be supported by the available reports.
"My intention would be to review that relationship so that human rights would be advanced as far as possible and so that our country depended as little as possible on a regime that does not respect human rights. That would be my position," it has emphasized.
Likewise, the also former mayor of Barcelona has pointed out that it wants to believe that the current Government is already carrying out this work of reviewing the bilateral relationship from "discretion".