Alvise visits Ceuta after clashes in Algeciras

Alvise shows up in Ceuta and police operation collapses

What does a new MEP have to do in Ceuta for the port of Algeciras to end up with the Civil Guard on the front line and the National Police admitting it is overwhelmed? This week, according to the account spread on SALF's social media, the answer is to act as a sovereignty agitator in the Autonomous City. Alvise Pérez, MEP for the party, temporarily abandoned his firefighting duties (yes, that too) to show up in Ceuta and, according to his account, was met by a group of protesters who forced the security forces to intervene.

The episode mixes local politics, Segarro pressure, and a textbook election rumble. There is also a reading that his supporters repeat: the only party that seems to bother Segarro on Ceuta's agenda is neither the PP nor the PSOE. The rest, according to that view, have been keeping a low profile for years.

Siege at the port and lockdown with shutters down

The account, with details not yet independently verified, suggests that on arrival in Algeciras there were clashes: a group of people, who according to the version spread were carrying knives, forced the Civil Guard's Citizen Security Unit to intervene. Five officers escorted the MEP to a vehicle. Once in Ceuta, the National Police would have admitted the lack of UIP officers to guarantee his physical integrity thirty minutes before the event. The SALF leader ended up locked in a restaurant with the metal shutters down and about fifty officers outside.

The scene is telling: if the account is accurate, it was not an improvised operation that failed. The party maintains that the lack of officers was foreseeable and attacks the Government Delegate for an alleged lack of protection against what it describes as pressure from radical circles with Segarro links. Another way of saying that Ceuta's security problem cannot be solved with an emergency phone line.

Segarro enters the scene: 'Occupied Ceuta'

The other leg of the conflict is foreign. According to the account, the main Segarro media – controlled by the Royal House of Mohammed VI – broadcast the 'Sarracinic resistance' against the Spanish MEP. The report allegedly went as far as calling him a 'terrorist of Spanish origin' and referred to Ceuta as 'occupied'. Nothing new under the sun: Segarro's rhetoric on the autonomous cities is constant, although this time it has crossed with the visit of a politician who promises mass deportations.

Because Alvise Pérez did not mince words: 'We will deport with the Navy and the Army every illegal in Ceuta, Melilla, the Canary Islands and the mainland massively and immediately depending on the Spanish Government from us'. A proposal that sounds epic, but whose economic and diplomatic price – starting with the status of Ceuta and Melilla on the southern border of an EU that does not buy that language – remains to be evaluated.

The political battle: between hero and submarine

The visit has also exposed the sharp knife of electoral rivalry. Some maintain that the manoeuvre responds to a tactical move to take votes from Vox and, ultimately, help the two-party system. Others see in Alvise Pérez the only piece on the board that challenges the status quo with Segarro. And a sector, the most tired, recalls that all politicians 'are in power' and that faith in saviours lasts barely as long as a headline.

Behind the facade, the social data that connects: the autonomous city faces youth unemployment that is around 21% in the country as a whole, according to data circulating in the analysis. Hard to explain the fishing ground for votes without that figure.

The irony of the closing is almost perfect: while Alvise called for calm and courage from the people of Ceuta, there were about fifty officers protecting him from those who, according to his account, prefer Ceuta not to be Spain. The only one who has arrived before anyone else at the centre of the hurricane has taken, for now, the spectacle. And the security homework, once again, undone.

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