Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has rebuked King Felipe VI for never having visited Ceuta, using the monarch’s absence to answer criticism of his own handling of the migration crisis in the autonomous city.
Asked on Cadena SER‘s Hoy por Hoy programme on August 31 about the King’s role, Sánchez asked how many times the head of state had been to Ceuta and Melilla and answered his own question. Not once, he said, under socialist and People’s Party (PP) administrations alike.
He set that against his eight years in office, saying he had been the first serving prime minister to travel to both cities. He put the King’s reign at more than 20 years.
Felipe VI was proclaimed on June 19, 2014 and has reigned for 12. No Spanish head of state has visited Ceuta since November 2007, when Juan Carlos I travelled there and Morocco, which claims both cities, withdrew its ambassador.
Under the Spanish Constitution the King’s official engagements require the endorsement of the government, so the decision on a trip has rested with successive administrations including Sánchez’s own. Asked whether Felipe VI wanted to go, he declined to answer and referred the question to the Royal Household.
Sánchez said the visit would happen when conditions allowed. He gave no date and said the timing would be coordinated by the government with the Zarzuela palace.
The two men then met at the Zarzuela for about three hours on the afternoon of August 31. Moncloa and the palace said the meeting had been arranged before the summer and had passed off normally, though The Objective reported it ran to three and a half hours and appeared on no official diary.
Transport minister Óscar Puente denied that his boss had reproached anyone, saying the remarks were aimed at those using the King for political ends. The PP called on Sánchez to show the head of state due respect and to stop handling the Crown for partisan advantage.
PP spokesman Borja Sémper said Spain’s institutions should not become ground for confrontation, adding that party leader Alberto Núñez Feijoo would have gone to Ceuta with the King.
The Royal Household had already broken with its usual reticence in early August, issuing a statement on the King’s concern at the crossings, after which Felipe VI received Ceuta’s mayor-president Juan Jesús Vivas at Marivent.
More than 70,000 people entered the city from Morocco on July 30 in what European Commissioner Magnus Brunner later called a test the EU had passed. About 5,000 remain, including some 1,200 minors.
Sánchez is due to appear before the Congress of Deputies on September 3.
