The tension with Vox crystallizes in Ceuta

Carlos Verdejo, deputy of Vox, pointing out the deputy of Caballas, Mohamed, Ali, in the Ceuta Assembly, in January 2020 ... Antonio Semperes

The political tension in Ceuta crystallized, paradoxically, in one of the calmest plenary sessions of the last two months. After several sessions suspended and canceled in the Assembly of the autonomous city on account of the fights and confrontations between councilors over the accusations of "pro-Moroccans" and "fifth columnists" of the spokesman for Vox in the local Assembly, Carlos Verdejo, the plenary approved this Friday , without insults or fuss, declare the leader of the far-right formation, Santiago Abascal, persona

in the city.

"Ceuta has to be the place from which to declare

Abascal

", defended Fátima Hamed, leader and spokesperson of the Movement for Dignity and Citizenship (MDyC), which presented the motion. The proposal, which went ahead with 10 votes in favor of PSOE (7), MDyC (2) and Caballas (1) and the abstention of the nine councilors of the PP, accounts for the tension that exists in the city after two visits in May from Abascal. Then, in full chaos unleashed during the two days of border crisis in which between 10,000 and 11,000 people entered the city from Morocco, the Vox leader charged against the "fifth columnists of [Moroccan King] Mohamed VI", referring to Ceuta's Muslim population, which accounts for approximately half of the city's 85,000 inhabitants.

"The first thing the rest of the political forces did was make our help available for whatever had to be done," says Hamed. "They unchecked themselves, they continued to set fire, they took the opportunity to sell their speech." "Since Santiago Abascal came and said about the fifth column, [the councilors of Vox] have taken it as a mantra," agrees Mohamed Ali, leader and only deputy of the local Caballas formation in the Assembly. "And that is very dangerous, because it involves putting into question the Spanishness of the city itself."

Both Hamed and Alí have been the constant target of verbal attacks by the Vox spokesperson in the Assembly, whom Verdejo has repeatedly labeled "pro-Moroccan."

He has also considered the formations that both lead as "Islamists."

"What if we deport you to Morocco?" He attacked Fatima Hamed on social media.

These crosses of accusations and insults (Verdejo has been shouted "fascist", "scoundrel", "clown" and "shit" in plenary sessions) have raised the tension in each session to levels not remembered in recent decades in the city.

According to a Vox spokeswoman (which has four councilors), such a level of tension is due to the fact that the rest of the formations "take advantage of the interventions to attack Vox."

The clash with the PP

Only since May, President Juan Jesús Vivas, of the PP, has been forced to suspend at least three ordinary plenary sessions. Vivas is one of the most outraged with the speech of the representatives of Vox, whom he has branded as "retrograde populists." "They have been hardening the discourse", illustrates Carlos Rontomé, spokesman for the PP and vice president of the local Executive. "[The tactic] is to accuse everyone of pro-Moroccan, not only the deputies of Caballas and MDyC, but also the PSOE, of course, and now us." "Everyone, except them, we are traitors to Spain", he describes, "and with those wickers it is very difficult to have normal plenary sessions."

The escalation began in 2020, when Vox faced an internal crisis at the local level with the leak of xenophobic messages in a private chat in which the local leaders of the far-right party called for “a war” against the supposed “Islamization” of the city. Two councilors resigned from the party, which was left with four of the six deputies obtained in the municipal elections of 2019. Until that moment, the PP still had the support of Vox (which it rejected for the investiture) to maintain the first minority government, after lose the favor of the PSOE.

“We thought they were going to soften the discourse,” argues Rontomé, “but we were wrong;

it is a party that does not understand the political game ”.

Ceuta maintains a precarious balance between cultural and religious communities.

As in Melilla, the landing of Vox has meant a political and ideological earthquake: in the general elections of 2019 they managed to agglutinate 35% percent of the votes to Congress, becoming the first political force.

"Ceuta has been used by Vox Nacional as a laboratory for experiments," criticizes Manuel Hernández, PSOE spokesman in the Assembly and leader of the Ceuta Socialists.

“With the electoral results, they saw here a very interesting breeding ground for their ideological premises and for experimentation.

In a society like Ceuta or Melilla it is very delicate and very dangerous ”.