The government of Spain has dismissed the official in charge of communications at the Department of National Security (DSN).
She was let go last Friday during a phone call while on vacation. The dismissal followed the publication of a warning on the DSN website, which cited sources from the Ministry of Internal Affairs stating that 49,000 migrants had illegally crossed the border into Ceuta.
The message, which was quickly removed from the DSN website, marked the first official acknowledgment of the scale of the migration crisis in Ceuta. Subsequently, the number of migrants officially surpassed 60,000.
Details of the Message and Consequences
The message indicated that “in the last 24 hours, according to estimates, more than 49,000 migrants illegally entered Ceuta through the breakwater and Tarajal beach, making it the largest migration crisis in the city since May 2021″.
It was also reported that “last night, while thousands of people continued to arrive in the Moroccan city of Castillejos with the same intention, some media reported the use of crowd dispersal measures by Moroccan security forces”. That same morning, sources from the Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed that more than 40,000 migrants had already entered Ceuta.
The dismissed civil servant, who had managed the DSN website for many years, previously worked in the Ministry of Defense. Such swift dismissals are extremely rare, as employees are typically transferred back to their original ministries.
Following her dismissal, she was designated as “available without assignment”, which entails a significant salary reduction. Since then, no new messages have been published on the Department of National Security website, starting from July 31.
Source: El País
