There is a place in Spain where nobody wants to agree with Vox, not even the PP. The Executive of Ceuta, led by Juan Vivas (PP), who governs in a minority after the May elections with 9 of the 25 deputies that make up the Assembly, continues to seek to reach an agreement with the opposition parties that ensures governability during the next four years in an area with singularities –cultural, political and geographical– that do not occur in any other territory of the State. Some singularities that leave Vox out of the equation since the popular ones are not willing to sit down and talk with the ultranationalists either, despite the fact that with the sum of their five representatives they would reach a majority. His speech is incompatible with that of coexistence in this border territory.
The paradox is that President Vivas, of the PP, hoped to agree with the Socialists, who with six deputies would have guaranteed a stable government, but, despite the initial disposition of their local leaders, the party leadership in Ferraz street has prevented the agreement. With the PP to nowhere, even in Ceuta. That has been the message. The closure.
However, the local socialist leaders leave open the possibility of supporting some initiatives as occurred in the previous legislature. At the moment, the budgets or the planning of the territory are in the air.
Vivas, for his part, tries to encapsulate Ceuta's policy from the rest of the country, breaking with the dynamics of his party, where Alberto Núñez Feijóo has given the green light to numerous pacts with ultranationalists. In Ceuta, this option is unfeasible "because we do not share the same philosophy of the city," government sources told La Vanguardia. "We are not going to blow up coexistence," they point out. The discrepancies go through "not betting on coexistence" between the four different cultures that coexist in the city, "going against the Muslim community and not recognizing it as Spanish despite having been born here and regardless of who they pray to, betting by militarized borders and wanting to eliminate egalitarian education projects” denying the scourge of “gender violence”.
“No one is going to agree to anything with Vox, neither now nor in the future. It is not something personal, it is something unanimous ”, confirmed Alejandro Ramírez, spokesman for the Executive.
The ultranationalists consider that Vivas – whom they have called a “mafioso” and “cancer” – “is forced to commune with mill wheels and swallow with Sánchez's puppies and a kind of radical Islamists whitewashed under the label of progressive localism”, according to the leader of Vox in Ceuta, Juan Sergio Redondo.
The situation is complex and fragile. The PP asks for an altitude of vision from the rest of the parties in the Assembly and particularly from the PSOE, one of whose spokesmen assures that "there can be no government pact with Feijóo's PP."
Vivas regrets that the Socialists do not understand the particularities of the city and fears that sensitive initiatives will now be blocked. "We are facing a legislature in which we will have to make decisions, undertake actions and set positions that will be decisive for Ceuta in the coming decades and, furthermore, because its stability is a fundamental issue", he stressed, while emphasizing that both " Ceuta and Melilla are affected by threats and risks that do not occur in any other part of the State”.
Despite the closure of the Socialists, the president of Ceuta keeps the line of communication open with the opposition, the negotiations with the MDyC (three deputies) of Fatima Hamed, who promoted the declaration of persona non grata of Santiago Abascal in Ceuta, approved two years ago with the abstention of the PP, they are advancing, while the door to Ceuta is not closed now! (two deputies), led by Mohamed Mustafa, despite the fact that his policies on the border collide head-on.
