The Government delegate in Ceuta, Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano, has reiterated that he never received officially the warnings from the National Intelligence Center (CNI) about the call spread on social networks to attempt a massive entry into the autonomous city at the end of July, and that everything was limited to an "informal communication exchange" with a member of his cabinet.
The documents on the migration crisis declassified this Wednesday indicate that the CNI communicated to the Government Delegation in Ceuta the existence of a "call" on social networks to organize an "assault by fence and sea" to the autonomous city via the instant messaging application WhatsApp on July 29, that is, one day before the massive arrival of more than 70,000 immigrants from Morocco.
Hours after those reports were made public, Miguel Ángel Pérez held a press conference in which he emphasized that "he had no knowledge of that conversation with the CNI." At the same time, he stressed that "it is very easy to take the messages out of context" that appear in the declassified documentation and insisted that "it is nothing more than an informal communication exchange."
The delegate also recalled that "we cannot forget that we were already in a situation of enormous border migration pressure with hundreds of entries daily," focusing on the prior saturation scenario that the city was already experiencing.
Questioned by journalists about the actions of the Government Delegation, Pérez Triano rejected presenting his resignation and defended that the CNI must convey information of that relevance "to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, not to a Government delegate."
"It can be thought that I already knew. I knew nothing. We had a migration context that was worsening every day," emphasized the representative of the central Executive in Ceuta, who again stressed that the CNI "says the same thing we said": "But no one could foresee what happened."
For its part, sources from the CNI indicated this Wednesday afternoon that, although they did send prior information, "it did not anticipate the magnitude and nature of what ultimately occurred" as it was an "unusual phenomenon" compared to other migration crises recorded previously.