The man blamed for letting MILLIONS of migrants into Spain

The handling of the migration crisis in Ceuta in September 2026 has sparked a fierce internal debate within the Spanish Government and the PSOE (Socialist Party), pointing to **Diego Rubio**, director of the President's Office, as responsible for a "catastrophic" chain of errors.

## The failed strategy in Ceuta

The mass arrival of migrants in **Ceuta** in September 2026 has exposed a deep internal crisis within the Government and the PSOE. Eyes are turning to **Diego Rubio**, director of the President's Office, who is being blamed for a "catastrophic" chain of errors in managing the crisis. Sources from the Government and the party say the strategy of backing Interior Minister **Fernando Grande-Marlaska**'s thesis of blaming the CNI (Spain's intelligence service) was taken too far, based on reports that did not support that narrative. It is argued that **Marlaska** should have understood that **Margarita Robles**, then Defence Minister, was acting on legal principles rather than engaging in a mere political standoff. The release of classified documents, instead of defending the Government, ended up backfiring, putting even more pressure on the administration's actions.

## Miscalculation and arrogance

Criticism focuses on **Rubio**'s inability to foresee the consequences of the strategy adopted. He is accused of wrongly calculating that publishing the reports would discredit the CNI, generating a public debate about the intelligence service's supposed lack of foresight or communication. The effect, however, was the opposite: the declassified documents confirmed that the CNI had indeed issued warnings, and it was not the only one to do so. This outcome has exposed a possible lack of understanding on **Rubio**'s part of how the security services operate, along with a certain arrogance in refusing to admit mistakes. Some voices suggest that his strong focus on long-term strategy may have prevented him from effectively managing short-term crisis communication.

## Immigration, an underestimated issue

A key point in the criticism of **Diego Rubio** is the alleged underestimation of the severity of irregular immigration. Government sources suggest that **Rubio** failed to give due importance to the rising number of arrivals, even after the precedent of the **2021** storming of the border. A phone call is recalled between **Juan Jesús Vivas**, president of Ceuta, and **Rubio** on 27 July 2026, in which the latter downplayed the arrivals, considering them an annual phenomenon. Although Moncloa (the Prime Minister's office) claimed to have acted by liaising with the Interior Ministry and adopting measures, police unions denounced the insufficient number of officers at the border. The persistence of the error became evident when the strategy was maintained even as **Robles** tried to unify the narrative, defending the CNI's work while acknowledging that "everything can be improved" and that the scale of the storming had "few precedents".

## No resignations and a defiant defence

Despite the political storm, no resignations have taken place. **Fernando Grande-Marlaska**, at the centre of the hurricane, has defended his position arguing that there is "no reason" to resign. He has clung to an alleged CNI statement, released by the State Secretariat for Communication, to insist on his thesis that the intelligence services did not warn of the scale of the events in **Ceuta**. For the minister, the published documents only showed the usual alerts of the summer season, when irregular entries increase. The situation highlights the complexity of migration management and the difficulty of finding consensus in the political narrative in the face of events of this magnitude.