“The world is looking at Spain today”, highlighted yesterday the spokeswoman for the Executive, Isabel Rodríguez, before what she described as a “key week”, due to the relevant NATO meeting in Madrid. "The Government wants this summit to be a success for the country, of which we all feel proud," she stressed. Moncloa has spent months preparing this event in detail, planned as one of the great milestones in international politics and in the entire mandate of Pedro Sánchez, who today will host the Euro-Atlantic meeting, and for the first time officially, the president of the United States, Joe Biden.
The new global, military, political, economic and energy geostrategic order unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the framework in which this transcendental summit of the Atlantic Alliance in the Spanish capital is inscribed. But, in its prolegomena, the humanitarian tragedy caused last Friday at the Melilla fence crossed the road, where at least 23 sub-Saharan migrants lost their lives.
The human drama on the border with Morocco, a country with which the Spanish Executive wants to avoid clouding its recently restored diplomatic relations –despite suffering a serious clash with Algeria as a consequence–, opens another avenue of political conflict for Sánchez. The head of the Executive sees himself like this again in the face of a serious political crisis that has occurred, which once again tightens the seams of the government coalition between the PSOE and United We Can and provokes an avalanche of criticism and demands for appearances, explanations and rectifications both on the part of the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo as of the majority of the allies of the Government's legislature, such as Esquerra or EH Bildu.
The Executive wanted yesterday, first of all, to correct the absence of mourning for the death of migrants in the messages that Sánchez sent the same Friday from Brussels, before there was evidence of the human tragedy that occurred, and already on Saturday when he appeared in Moncloa to announce the new plan to combat the inflationary crisis, when the growing number of deaths in their attempt to overcome the Melilla fence was already known. Sánchez himself, however, lamented the loss of human lives in the interview published yesterday by La Vanguardia.
“This reality and these images move us all. We would have ceased to be human if we were not moved by images of these characteristics, our hearts and souls did not shrink, ”said the Government spokesperson yesterday, who thus conveyed the pain and condolences for the deceased. However, Isabel Rodríguez reiterated the same messages issued by the President of the Government, in terms of blaming the "international mafias that traffic in human beings" for the tragedy and highlighting the "collaboration" of the gendarmerie and the Moroccan authorities to try to contain the assault on the Melilla fence. "Together we are ensuring to protect our border," said the Executive spokeswoman in the face of what she described as an "aggression" to the Spanish border, which she warned is also European. "The Government thanks the Moroccan authorities for their collaboration in defending our borders."
However, the appearance in Moncloa after the Council of Ministers was notably uncomfortable for both the spokesperson for the Executive, the socialist Isabel Rodríguez, and for the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, due to the critical position of her own political party. Despite the fact that repeated questions from the press were addressed to Montero, to know her opinion on the matter or if she supported the position set by the spokeswoman, it was Rodríguez who assumed the answers. “If the Minister for Equality agrees, I will respond to all questions related to what happened at the Melilla fence,” Rodríguez justified, in his role as spokesperson for the entire Executive.
And so it was, while Montero chose to remain silent. The political position of United We Can, in any case, is very critical.
Up to seven formations with representation in Congress also registered the request for the appearance of Sánchez and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, as "responsible" for the events that occurred in Melilla, whose death toll rose to 37 people. ERC, EH Bildu, Junts, Más País and Compromís, the CUP and the BNG also expressed their rejection of Sánchez's statements in which he "closed ranks with the actions of the Moroccan army."
In fact, already at night, in Barcelona, Pere Aragonès and Ada Colau asked the president, during the Pimec awards ceremony attended by Sánchez, for an investigation into what happened at the Melilla border.
Likewise, the PP, through the mouth of Esteban González Pons, demanded that Sánchez "retract" the statements in which he stressed that the Moroccan authorities had resolved well what, in the opinion of the popular, was "a massive assault with a terrible loss of human lives and injuries.
The consequences of the tragedy at the Melilla fence also go beyond Spanish borders, as the African Union yesterday expressed its "deep shock and concern at the violent and degrading treatment of African migrants who try to cross an international border from Morocco to Spain". This organization called for "an immediate investigation" in this regard.
In the Spanish Executive they warn that their position regarding the demands for investigations will always be set "within the European Union".
