Feijóo vindicates the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla and rejects that their future is negotiable

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, president of the Popular Party, has come out this Wednesday in defense of the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla and has stressed that the integrity of both cities “is not an open question for negotiation”.

In a message published on the social network X, Feijóo has affirmed that “Ceuta and Melilla have been part of Spain for centuries, with the same rights and the same dignity as any other territory”, while insisting that their territorial integrity cannot be the subject of political debate.

The leader of the opposition has thus echoed the article published in El Mundo by the president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, and the president of Melilla, Juan José Imbroda, under the title “Ceuta and Melilla are Spain”.

“I share the defense of the Spanishness of both cities made by presidents Imbroda and Vivas. They have all my support. With Ceuta and Melilla, always,” Feijóo wrote in the same publication.

Vivas and Imbroda reject the comparison with Gibraltar and the Sahara

Vivas and Imbroda respond in that text to the column by the writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, who defended an agreement to return the two cities to Morocco and spoke of a supposed “colonization that makes no sense”. Against this thesis, both presidents maintain that Ceuta and Melilla “are not Moroccan territory” and do not constitute “territories pending decolonization”.

The regional leaders add that “there is no Moroccan sovereignty that Spain should ‘return’” nor a pending issue that can be resolved by negotiating the future of two Spanish cities “behind the backs of their citizens”. Likewise, it is rejected that an analogy can be drawn with Gibraltar or with the Western Sahara, since both appear in the list of “non-self-governing territories of the United Nations”, while “Ceuta and Melilla, no”, they emphasize.

A warning about migratory pressure and the relationship with Morocco

After recalling that, 50 days after the massive entry of immigrants into Ceuta, “the city is a pressure cooker about to explode”, Vivas and Imbroda warn that good neighborliness between Spain and Morocco “cannot be built at the expense of the territorial integrity of one of the two countries”, but on the basis of “reciprocal” respect.

The presidents of Ceuta and Melilla reiterate that both cities are “Spanish” and ask Tahar Ben Jelloun for a rectification of his statements, which they consider “incorrect” for departing from the historical, legal and territorial reality of both places.