Vox has authorised a criminal complaint against Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska over the mass entry of migrants into Ceuta at the end of July. The complaint alleges malfeasance in public office, collaboration with terrorism, failure to render assistance and causing bodily harm.
Jorge Buxadé, the party’s national legal coordinator and head of its delegation in the European Parliament, set out the plan at a press conference in Madrid on September 7. He said Vox’s political action committee had authorised the filing at its meeting that morning, though he gave no date for lodging it.
The complaint would also name Aina Calvo, the secretary of state for security. Vox has blamed the Spanish Government for the collapse of the border from the first days of the crisis.
Buxadé repeated the party’s demand that parliament activate Article 102 of the Constitution, which allows the Congress of Deputies to bring a treason accusation against a sitting prime minister before the Supreme Court. The procedure requires the signatures of a quarter of the chamber, or 88 of its 350 members, followed by an absolute majority vote.
Vox cannot reach that threshold alone. It has 32 deputies after Javier Ortega Smith left the parliamentary group in July, and Buxadé said 56 more were needed for the accusation to proceed.
The Partido Popular (PP), with 137 seats the only party able to make up the difference, has declined to support the move. Its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijoo, has instead pressed the Government over its handling of relations with Rabat.
Spain’s interior ministry has put at about 72,000 the number of people who crossed from Morocco into Ceuta on July 30 and 31, in what Sánchez called an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity. At least 72 died, most of them by drowning, and the great majority of those who entered were returned within days.
The party’s case draws on a report by the Centro Nacional de Inmigración y Fronteras, the intelligence unit of the National Police immigration directorate, sent to National Court judge María Tardón on September 1. It concludes that the crossing cannot be explained without prior planning and states that Moroccan gendarmes guided people towards the Tarajal breakwater.
Sánchez addressed the Congress of Deputies on September 3, his first appearance on the crisis. He accepted that the Moroccan Gendarmerie had allowed the border to be crossed during ten hours on July 30, though he said nobody had given the Government evidence that Rabat had designed or carried out the entry.
The interior ministry has said it cannot establish the involvement of any government, while not disputing the images examined by the police unit.
