Fourteen autonomous communities have supported this Thursday the transfer of 25 million euros to Ceuta to care for unaccompanied immigrant minors who remain in the city after the massive entry on July 30. The decision was approved at the Sectorial Conference on Childhood and Adolescence, although the agreement has once again highlighted the differences between the Government and the communities governed by the Popular Party on how to address the crisis.
The PP communities that participated in the meeting voted in favor of the transfer, although they believe that the amount is insufficient to address the situation that Ceuta is going through. Madrid has been particularly critical of the amount. Its Minister of Family, Ana Dávila-Ponce de León, has warned that the 25 million euros will barely cover two months of care for the more than 1,500 minors who, according to the refined data handled by the Ministry of Youth and Childhood, currently remain in the city.
The agreement did not have the support of all the popular autonomies. Aragón, Castilla y León, and Extremadura have formally rejected the transfer and did not participate in the meeting, an absence that reproduces the boycott from the previous call. In the three territories, the competencies of Childhood are linked to PP governments in which Vox has responsibilities.
The majority support of the PP
The rest of the communities governed by the PP have indeed supported the funding, although with significant reservations about the Government's response. Andalucía, Galicia, Cantabria, La Rioja, Murcia, Comunidad Valenciana, Baleares, and Madrid participated in the meeting, along with Canarias, which has a coalition government between Coalición Canaria and PP. Ceuta and Melilla also intervened, in their case with a direct interest in having the rest of the territories assume part of the pressure they bear.
The position of the PP thus moves between supporting the State to provide resources and rejecting that the funding be used as a way to consolidate a distribution of minors across the Peninsula. The popular party considers the 25 million insufficient, but at the same time demands that minors who can be returned be sent back to their families in Morocco, instead of automatically transferring them to other autonomous communities.
Dávila-Ponce de León herself has defended that the priority must be to locate the families of the minors and study their return to Morocco, and has rejected that they be transferred to the Peninsula to be distributed among the communities. The Madrid approach reflects the position that the PP has been maintaining in recent weeks: to accept that Ceuta needs economic support, but not to assume that the solution necessarily involves distributing the minors throughout the rest of Spain.
This Thursday's meeting has also served to highlight the differences regarding the procedure that the Government intends to follow. The Ministry of Youth and Childhood had initially included in the agenda the debate on the situation of the minors in Ceuta, in addition to the economic transfer. The PP communities had questioned that this issue be incorporated into the Sectorial Conference in a way they considered irregular, and finally, the Ministry opted to withdraw it.
500 minors, pending from Ceuta
The underlying issue, however, remains. The Government wants the minors to be transferred as soon as possible from Ceuta to other communities to relieve the reception resources of the city and for the processes of identification, interviews, and study of each case to be completed in those territories. The Administration argues that these actions can also be carried out outside of Ceuta and that waiting to complete them in the autonomous city would prolong a saturation situation that has already become critical.
The Ministry is officially working with the priority of reunifying the minors with their families or facilitating their return to Morocco when possible, but acknowledges that these repatriations cannot be done automatically. It is necessary to locate the relatives, verify the circumstances of each minor, and ensure that there is a safe place to which they can return. This process, according to the Executive, can take months if it is carried out entirely in Ceuta.
Sira Rego has also proposed the urgent transfer of 500 girls to resources from private entities and NGOs on the Peninsula.
The decision, however, corresponds to Ceuta as the territory that exercises guardianship over these minors. The central Government intends to use these transfers as a way to alleviate the immediate pressure on the Ceuta centers.
The number of minors who remain in the city has also been the subject of controversy. In recent weeks, figures of up to 4,000 minors were handled by social organizations and more than 2,900 by the Government. The Ministry of Youth and Childhood now states that, once the records have been purged and duplicate files eliminated, there are at least 1,500 identified and registered minors, although there would still be children and adolescents pending identification who are not included in that figure.
The PP considers the amount insufficient
The funding approved this Thursday seeks to respond to part of that emergency, but it will hardly close the political confrontation. For the Government, the 25 million constitutes a necessary injection for Ceuta to maintain the care of minors while a solution is articulated. For the PP, the amount is insufficient and does not resolve the fundamental problem: what to do with the minors, how long they will remain in Ceuta, and when they can be returned to their families.
The result of the Sectorial Conference leaves, therefore, a very precise political picture. The majority of the communities have agreed to put money to alleviate the situation in Ceuta; three territories governed by the PP and with a presence of Vox have opted not to participate; and the rest of the popular autonomies have given their support to the funding, but questioning both its amount and the territorial distribution strategy proposed by the Government.
A month after the massive entry that triggered the crisis, Ceuta continues to bear extraordinary pressure on its child protection system. The 25 million approved will allow time to be gained, but do not resolve the issue that confronts the Government and the PP: whether the response should consist of transferring minors to other communities while each file is studied or accelerating, as the main opposition party demands, the procedures that allow their return to their families and to Morocco.