Thousands of people from across the political spectrum took to the streets of Ceuta on Sunday to proclaim that their city is Spanish and to demand that the socialist government in Madrid enforce border control after tens of thousands of illegals stormed the territory from Morocco.
Between five and ten thousand people, depending on police or protest organiser estimates, rallied in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on Sunday to express their displeasure with the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and its failures to protect their city.
The protest, which was notable in that it drew attendees from across the political spectrum and from various religious and ethnic groups of the city, was organised in the wake of upwards of 70,000 illegal migrants crossing the border from neighbouring Morocco earlier this month in the space of just one day.
For the exclave of just 87,000 people, which has been under Spanish control for centuries, the “invasion” earlier this month represented an existential threat to their way of life.
Given the scale of the threat, the Christian, Muslim, Hebrew and Hindu communities as well as the Provincial Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Ceuta organised a mass demonstration as a show of unity.
According to El Mundo, demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Sánchez resign”, “Spanish Ceuta”, “Enough is enough,” and “Ceuta does not give up”.
At the demonstration, the president of the Hindu Community of Ceuta, Ramesh Chandiramani, representing all main religious groups in the city, read before the crowd the “Manifesto for the Unity of Ceuta,” which began with the affirmation that “Ceuta is Spain”.
“We are Ceutíes. We are Spanish. And we defend our Spanishness from unity, from coexistence and from mutual respect,” Chandiramani said.
The manifesto said that the migrant crisis facing the city is “extraordinarily critical” and that Ceuta has suffered “a violation of territorial integrity” for which the Spanish and EU governments must respond with “immediate, decisive, and proportionate” action.
“Ceuta cannot face alone a situation that far exceeds its capabilities and that affects the whole of Spain and Europe,” the group stated.
The storming of the Ceuta border earlier this month came in the wake of the Spanish Supreme Court ruling that migrants who arrive by sea cannot be pushed back by border authorities or other law enforcement, meaning that illegals could simply walk a few feet into the Mediterranean Sea on the Moroccan side of the border and technically be arriving by water into Ceuta.
It also came in the wake of a controversial amnesty scheme from the Socialist Sánchez government, which may see upwards of a million illegals become legal residents in the coming months, and likely millions more in the coming years due to family chain migration and the increased pull factor for other illegals hoping to gain residency in the future.
The leader of the anti-mass migration VOX party, Santiago Abascal, has called for Prime Minister Sánchez to be investigated for “possible crimes of treason” for having allowed tens of thousands of migrants to break into Spanish territory. The opposition leader has called on the Spanish parliament to invoke a constitutional provision allowing the Supreme Court to investigate the government for treason.
“Pedro Sánchez’s betrayal of the Spanish people must be brought before the courts,” Abascal proclaimed.