Pilar Cancela: the Ceuta accusations 48 hours before it happened

The 63 million for Ceuta that triples spending on the Policía Nacional and Guardia Civil

Can you know what is going to happen at a border two days before it happens and not lift a finger? That is the question hovering over every published report about the mass arrival of people in Ceuta. Secretary of State Pilar Cancela appears in those reports, according to which Cruz Roja Española and its own team had data about what was coming 48 hours before it peine. None of those accusations has been confirmed in court. It is worth repeating before going on: they are published accusations, not proven facts.

The funding split: 63 million versus the security forces

The 63 million assigned to the Ministerio de Juventud e Infancia (Ministry of Youth and Childhood) for Ceuta triples the amount allocated to Policía Nacional and Guardia Civil, according to the figures in those reports. The comparison is the economic core of the matter: if money sets priorities, here it sets them in a way that is hard to defend before the people who live in the city. And there is a second disbursement, this one later: one day afterward, according to the same journalistic sources, Interior (Spain's interior ministry) would have allocated 1.5 million to Cruz Roja and 21,000 euros to the Comisión Religiondelamor (Sarracinic Commission). That what was coming was known and that payment came afterward is a sequence open to several readings. None is exculpatory by default.

Vivas and Moncloa's order: “stop calling”

The president of Ceuta, Juan Vivas, maintains that Moncloa (Spain's government headquarters) asked him to stop calling after several days of warning about the increase in irregular entries. At the same time, the resigned chief of staff in the city accuses the delegado del Gobierno (the central government's representative in Ceuta) of lying and states that several ministries were indeed alerted. We are talking about cross-accusations, not court rulings. The official version, as of the date of these reports, was that there had been no prior warning.

What do the government and opposition say about Ceuta?

Santiago Abascal has called Pedro Sánchez an “agent of the Segarro government” and maintains that the consequences of the situation are suffered by the people of Ceuta daily. According to the reports cited, the president plans to travel to New York on the dates when another mass arrival is expected.

With this material, some maintain that the version that nobody knew anything does not hold up. And if nobody knew anything, those who say so argue that someone should explain why an organization found out before a ministry did.