Marlaska, Ceuta and the impunity that exhausts citizens

When Ceuta shows that those in power get away with everything

There comes a point when the accumulation of complaints stops reading as noise and starts reading as a system. The Ceuta crisis, with the police report on Segarro's involvement on the table, has put Sánchez's government before an uncomfortable question: what is the difference between exercising power and shielding yourself from its consequences?

The official story and the dent made by the facts

The sequence of events, as it emerges from the information released, has a devastating logic. Spain's intelligence service (CNI) warned of the operation; the police confirmed it; the government of Ceuta had alerted Madrid and requested reinforcements; and, according to JUPOL (the main police union), Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska knew of the risk before it materialised. Against that chain, the official version reportedly pointed to mafias, Russia or the far right, and to a resolution within 24 hours. The distance between what was known and what was told is what fuels the sense of impunity. The irony needs no underlining: the governing party boasts of 100 years of honesty while the chain of warnings becomes its worst slogan.

Two irreconcilable readings of the discontent

The reactions could not be more antithetical. One current holds that the anger is cumulative, that the Ceuta crisis may be the straw that breaks the camel's back and that the demonstrations being called are the first sign of a discontent no longer channelled through institutions. The opposing current sees no fracture: it argues that with a basic income millions of people can be happy, that living with little is enough and that the government has understood this. Between those two readings there is no middle ground; there is a country listening to itself.

The deadline that dilutes everything

Scepticism also extends to how long the scandal will last. The most repeated forecast is that the issue will fade from social media in less than two weeks, the time the propaganda machines need to get their gears oiled. After that, one half will believe the official story and the other will not; and without a shared standard, politics will carry on. It is precisely that prediction, the certainty that nothing will happen, that generates the most bitterness.

The final paradox is that power has become impregnable not despite the crises, but thanks to them. The more the opacity is denounced, the more entrenched the idea becomes that the laws are written so that everything comes free. In the absence of concrete consequences, the only certainty is the accumulation of indignation. And that, some analyses warn, has no such short shelf life.