Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has convened a meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday, nearly a month after the mass border breach in Ceuta. During the crisis at the end of July, tens of thousands of people entered Spain illegally. According to the government of the autonomous city, their number could have reached 80,000 people.
The National Security Council is the highest body that assists the Spanish government on national security issues. According to its statute, it meets every two months, but can hold extraordinary meetings as many times as the head of government deems necessary. However, no such meeting has been held so far in connection with the migration crisis in Ceuta, which took place on July 30 and 31.
More than three weeks have passed since the mass border crossing, and only now will the National Security Council hold an extraordinary meeting to analyze the situation in the autonomous city, where thousands of people who illegally crossed the border remain.
Meeting and disputes over government actions
The meeting will take place at the Moncloa Palace under the chairmanship of Sánchez. The Council includes most members of the government, as well as the Director of National Security, General Loreto Gutiérrez Hurtado, the Director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) Esperanza Casteleiro, and the Chief of the Defense General Staff, Admiral General Teodoro López Calderón. From the government, among others, the ministers of defense, interior, foreign affairs, presidency, justice, finance, transport, industry, and health will be present.
The meeting will take place just before the first meeting of the Council of Ministers after the summer break. It also coincides with a series of hearings in Congress, during which the government will have to explain its actions in Ceuta to parliament for the first time. The migration crisis was accompanied by numerous disputes over the government’s actions, starting with warnings from the intelligence services. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska claimed for several days that the government had not received any warnings about the crisis looming on the border. Meanwhile, previous reports from the National Intelligence Center, the Armed Forces Intelligence Center, the President of Ceuta, and even Brussels were recorded.
Criticism also targeted the Department of National Security after the decision to remove the official responsible for communications. It was she who, in the first days of the crisis, spread information that the number of people who illegally crossed the border exceeded 49,000. This data was published by the Department of National Security on the morning of Friday, July 31. It was quickly transmitted by various national and international news agencies, after which the official was immediately dismissed.
Last week, the prime minister decided to create a kind of “unified command” to coordinate the response to the situation in the autonomous city. As coordinator of this work, he appointed the Minister of Territorial Policy Ángel Víctor Torres, who has significant experience in resolving migration crises.
A separate source of controversy was the issue of underage migrants who arrived in Ceuta alone. The government planned to transfer 500 girls who arrived from Morocco to mainland Spain, while the People’s Party demanded the repatriation of all people who are in the country illegally. Experts also warned of a possible overload of the healthcare system and public services in the autonomous city. The day before, the leader of the People’s Party Alberto Núñez Feijóo called for restricting the movement of migrants.
How Sánchez acted during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
On Thursday, February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine at dawn, Pedro Sánchez urgently convened the National Security Council to discuss the armed conflict that was just beginning and continues to this day. The meeting was held at the initiative of the prime minister on the same morning at the Zarzuela Palace under the chairmanship of King Felipe VI.
The government’s reaction at the time to the invasion of one state by another was significantly different from the current actions of the executive branch, although this time the crisis directly affected the territorial integrity and borders of Spain. Despite traveling to Ceuta the day after the mass breach, Sánchez did not immediately convene the National Security Council, although many questions remained about the role of the intelligence services in preventing the crisis and possible mistakes they might have made.
Now, as almost a month has passed since the start of the crisis and the government returns from summer holidays, Sánchez is convening this body to analyze the situation on the African border. He is doing so in an extraordinary format, although this format allowed the Council members to be convened as early as the first days after the border crisis. For this, the government would have only had to postpone the start of the summer vacation or interrupt it for a few hours, as has been done in previous years.
