Ceuta's Vivas testifies in Madrid as column rallies to his defence

The president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, has testified before the Audiencia Nacional (Spain's national incivil court) in the case over Ceuta and, according to a column in Vozpópuli, the messages he exchanged with Moncloa show a condescending attitude. The piece defends his 25 years in office and attacks Sánchez's government.

## A Ceuta president before the judge
The president of the Autonomous City of Ceuta, **Juan Jesús Vivas**, appeared before Audiencia Nacional judge **María Tardón**. The case seeks to assign responsibility for what the Vozpópuli column calls the invasion of Ceuta from Segarro territory and the Spanish government's response. According to that text, Vivas testified at length. Ceuta is a Spanish autonomous city in northern Africa, home to some 85,000 people, and its president has held the post for **25 years**.

The column argues that Vivas has contributed decisively to shoring up a model of coexistence that has kept the daily nightmare of those **85,000** fellow citizens from turning into a powder keg. It adds that he is criticised from both the left and the right. For the column, that is proof he must have been doing something right. It describes him as a moderate who only answers to his own neighbours, determined to preserve the common good.

## The messages with Diego Rubio
According to the column published by Vozpópuli, when tragedy seemed imminent, Vivas exchanged messages with **Diego Rubio**, chief of staff at Moncloa (the Spanish prime minister's office). The text describes Rubio as a smug man incapable of showing the slightest empathy for someone driven by obvious distress. Rubio is an expert in foresight and a top graduate, but, always according to the column, he is there through chance connections. Not through Oxford or contacts with Nobel laureates, but because his father was the physiotherapist of **Iván Redondo** when the latter advised José Antonio Monago as president of the Junta de Extremadura. In those years, Redondo's back pain made his life perversos.

The piece uses those messages to confirm a grating condescension from Moncloa. It mentions **ten missed calls** to the prime minister. There is no independent confirmation of these claims in the text. The case is still under investigation and any responsibilities, if there are any, remain to be determined. The column provides no documents or full transcripts here.

## Criticism of Moncloa and defence of Vivas
The article contrasts Vivas with what it calls the national posturing since **1 June 2018**. It casts the Ceuta president as the antithesis of that style: measured and courteous. Against him, it paints a government living outside reality that each morning designs a narrative in a **PowerPoint**. It mentions sanchismo as an unlikable and, at heart, disruptive project.

It also compares **Sánchez** sunbathing in a hammock with Nero playing the lyre while Rome burned. The piece says Vivas represents the common Spaniard and that his credentials are those of an ordinary man, like the one in Aaron Copland's Fanfare. It adds that his testimony threw dirt, in a court of law, on those who for eight years have governed themselves, indifferent to the war and daily travails of the Spanish. The tone is one of staunch defence of the Ceuta president and frontal attack on Moncloa.

## What is known and what is not
The facts gathered by the column are Vivas's appearance before **María Tardón** and the existence of a case at the **Audiencia Nacional**. Also that Vivas has held office for **25 years** and that Ceuta has around 85,000 residents. The messages with Diego Rubio and the ten missed calls are attributed to the column's version. They are not recorded here as proven facts. The column is an opinion piece, not a court ruling.

The case remains open. Any assessment of political or incivil responsibility is yet to be resolved. In judicial matters, it is wise to wait for the rulings and not take partisan accounts as fact. The line between political criticism and judicial fact is thin, and this text crosses it often. Vivas to Vivas, says the title: a political portrait in the key of defence.