The president of Ceuta, Juan Vivas (PP), has blamed the central Government for the absence of "normality" in the autonomous city, which he attributes to the "manifest failure" of its "constitutional obligations" in the defense of the territorial integrity of Ceuta.
In an interview on "La Mesa" of Antena 3, collected by Europa Press, Vivas has lashed out at the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, for his "neglect of borders" and has emphasized that, as head of the Executive, he is obliged to safeguard the integrity of the territory, sovereignty, and the rights of citizens, which "in the case of Ceuta have been significantly diminished for the past three months."
The Ceuta leader has questioned the lack of foresight in the days leading up to the massive entry on July 30, recalling that the capacity to accommodate minors in Ceuta "had gone from 180 to 800" in just a week. He added that he conveyed a "call for help" to all the ministries involved to demand police reinforcements, the deployment of the Army, and the declaration of a state of emergency.
Likewise, he has defended that the "attack" on "territorial integrity" should have been responded to with "proportional measures to the damage caused," which, in his view, would have required the "immediate" removal of the migrant individuals who "stayed" in the city.
"All these are issues that highlight a failure on the part of the national government of its constitutional obligations that seems absolutely unacceptable to me," he stated emphatically.
Vivas has wanted, however, to exempt "any responsibility" from the state security forces, considering that "they did what they could and up to where they were allowed." "But there were political decisions so that those capabilities were not employed," he added.
"We owe loyalty to the citizens"
In Vivas's opinion, Sánchez "is not up to the responsibility that should be demanded of a president of the Government," and he has lamented not having recently had a direct conversation with him, beyond video conferences and meetings of the National Security Council.
The Ceuta president has rejected having violated "any rule of institutional loyalty": "What happens is that we owe loyalty to the citizens. Our main loyalty is to the Constitution, it is what we swore or promised."
Questioned about the role of Rabat in the migration crisis and the possible reasons for what happened, Vivas preferred not to "speculate." However, he pointed out that "there is an effort to excuse Morocco that does not correspond with the objective facts," since, in his opinion, the neighboring country was "behind the invasion" in an "undeniable" way.
Regarding the current scenario in Ceuta, he indicated that the autonomous city remains "far from normality" and has estimated that 15,000 migrants still need to be returned to Morocco.
Juan Jesús Vivas has pointed out that the absence of a "defined time horizon" causes "exhaustion" and "weariness" among the population, although he has ruled out a "social explosion" due to the "maturity" of the Ceutí people.