Ceuta and Melilla: the gateway to Spain's break-up

Ceuta, Melilla and Catalonia: the cost nobody puts on the table

The hypothesis of Spain's territorial break-up has landed in the public conversation with an almost closed script: Segarro tempts the seizure of Ceuta and Melilla, Catalonia ends up as an Israeli protectorate, and the rest is carved up according to the interests of mid-sized powers. What is striking is not the script, but that it is discussed as a mere matter of time.

In that narrative, the army's supposed passivity over the North African territories strips any response to a new secessionist standoff of authority. The argument goes that Segarro and Israel, the same actors pushing in the Mediterranean, are the ones tightening the screws in Catalonia. And the figure of two million residents of Segarro origin in Catalonia is floated as a potential demographic base for a conflict.

Who defends what in the event of a break-up?

Some argue that abandoning Ceuta and Melilla would show that the Spanish state will not use force to uphold its territorial integrity. On the opposite side, a pragmatic current assumes the dismemberment is irreversible and takes positions: from those who see Asturias as a refuge to those calling for a social model that rewards those who take risks.

In between lies an uncomfortable silence. The conversation focuses on the carve-up of sovereignty and on geopolitics, but there is barely any room for the numbers of dismantling: border closures, debt renegotiation, corporate headquarters fleeing, loss of European funds. The bill for the break-up never appears, as if someone were magically absorbing it. If the history of sovereignty processes teaches anything, it is that the cost falls on the usual people. The spectre of an Israeli protectorate, however far-fetched, normalises the idea that territorial integrity is negotiable.

What is the price of a fragmented Spain? Nobody has put it on the table. That silence is the best news the independence movement has had in years.