No president had visited the autonomous city three times, to which only Suárez and Zapatero traveled
MADRID, 28 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, returns this Wednesday to Ceuta in what will be his third visit in less than two years and will do so in the middle of the process of opening the new customs office agreed with Morocco within the framework of the roadmap that supports the new bilateral relationship between the two countries.
Sánchez travels to the autonomous city accompanied by the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, to inaugurate the new Tarajal Health Center, located just opposite the border with Morocco and in whose construction the Institute of Health has invested almost 5.6 million euros. Health Management (Ingesa).
The visit of the President of the Government will only last for a few hours, without Moncloa wanting to announce whether during that time he is expected to visit the facilities called to become the future commercial customs office with Morocco.
Unlike Melilla, where there was previously a customs office that Morocco unilaterally closed in 2018, Ceuta had not had such a facility to date. Its creation was agreed during the meeting that Sánchez held on April 7 with the King of Morocco, from which the roadmap that is guiding the new relationship emerged.
On January 27, the first pilot test was carried out at customs, a prefabricated booth in the case of Ceuta, with a commercial expedition, waiting for the High Level Meeting (RAN) on February 1 and 2 in Rabat will set the specific calendar for its “gradual and orderly” opening.
In the joint declaration, although without expressly mentioning Ceuta and Melilla, an agreed calendar was reported and the “commitment to the full normalization of the movement of people and goods in an orderly manner, including the appropriate customs control and people on land and sea.
The Government has not wanted to detail the calendar, relying on security issues and to avoid repeating “images of the past” due to the so-called atypical trade or eventual avalanches, as the Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, has been in charge of explaining, each time he has been asked about it, also in Congress and the Senate.
Thus, last Friday there was a new test at both customs with two commercial shipments carried out after incorporating “solutions to many of the technical difficulties” that had been detected then, according to Foreign Affairs, without knowing for now when it will take place. the next trial.
Sánchez’s visit also has a markedly symbolic character. Until now, no president of the Government had ever visited this autonomous city three times. In fact, only two heads of government have traveled to this democratic enclave in North Africa, Adolfo Suárez in 1980 and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2006.
The president traveled for the first time on May 18, 2021, in the midst of an avalanche of immigrants to Ceuta after Morocco provoked the assault of more than 10,000 people in the autonomous city in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Spain. So, Sánchez wanted to show the Government’s support for Ceuta as well as Melilla, where he also traveled.
The second visit took place on March 22, 2022, just four days after Morocco released Sánchez’s letter to Mohamed VI in which the Prime Minister expressed Spain’s support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara of 2007 as “the most serious, credible and realistic basis” for the resolution of the conflict.
Then, the head of the Executive wanted to explain to the autonomous city and its president, the ‘popular’ Juan Jesús Vivas, the benefits of the new stage that was opening in the relationship with Morocco as well as to reiterate the central government’s commitment to this city autonomy and its development.
On the other hand, the president has also publicly defended the Spanishness of the two autonomous cities against those who asked him to demand that Morocco recognize this fact, something that the Alaouite kingdom has never done. “Ceuta and Melilla are Spain, period,” he emphatically claimed in Congress last October after learning of a Moroccan letter in which he denied that the country had borders with the autonomous cities.
