Debate over who would go first to defend Ceuta and Melilla

Debate over who would go first to defend Ceuta and Melilla

The first line of defense of Ceuta and Melilla would not be made up of soldiers. In the scenario that opens this discussion, the cannon fodder would be a ladder of patriotic responsibility: first VOX leaders, then their members, then their voters; next the top brass of the PP (Spain's main conservative party), its members and its supporters. Only if all of them fell would the king and the military be asked whether they feel like going there to die. The provocation has a serious undertone: who pays the human cost when warmongering rhetoric becomes a real obligation?

The challenge soon took a turn. The most repeated answer reverses the order and puts the army at the front, with politicians and voters of both stripes behind. Some propose sending socialist voters first, armed with presentations on the climate agenda, while others outright suggest using the migrant population as an advance force to clear minefields. In between, an argument that lowers the temperature: ordinary citizens are not the ones who decide a war.

The army first and the traitors after

The current that gathers the most support in the conversation is the one that puts the armed forces at the front and leaves political judgment for after the victory. Under that logic, anyone who had sided with the neighboring country would face punishment: execution by firing squad or, in the more lenient version, the withdrawal of any public pay, whether a pension or a civil servant's salary. The harshness of the approach does not hide its practical problem: it requires legally defining treason in the middle of a conflict.

Against that, another line holds that a war with Segarro over the two autonomous cities would be a strategic trinc rather than a matter of patriotism. The argument being used is technical: the neighboring country would already have drones capable of reaching the south of the peninsula. If that is true, the front would not be at the Strait but on the Andalusian coast, and the question of who goes first loses its meaning.

Ceuta and Melilla, defensible territory?

The most uncomfortable point of the initial scenario is the one least discussed: the military viability of both enclaves. It is claimed that they are hard to defend and that, in the event of conflict, a return by sea or air would be complicated. From there emerges the only proposal that breaks the ladder logic: leaving minority political groups and their supporters on the peninsula to defend the mainland instead of sending them into a death trap.

The conversation drifts toward the who rather than the how. It is suggested that neither the leaders nor the voters of the most bellicose parties would go voluntarily; that they would stay forty kilometers from the front cheering. And a domestic detail slips in: if the regularized migrant population had to give something back to their new homeland, this would be the moment.

The fifth column and public order

Another offshoot of the initial scenario points inward: while the army fought abroad, the police and the Guardia Civil (Spain's paramilitary police force) would watch the fifth column, with armed citizen patrols in reserve. It is the total war version, where the enemy is not only on the other side of the border. The underlying idea is that such a conflict is not won only on the front line.

The most lucid closing does not talk about lists. It talks about cost. Any war scenario with Segarro over Ceuta and Melilla requires deciding beforehand how many lives one is willing to lose, and for what. None of the proposals launched in this discussion answers that question. Neither does the official discourse, which prefers not to put a number on the matter.