Felipe González again attacks Sánchez for the management of the crisis in Ceuta: "I have never seen him assume responsibilities"

The former President of the Government Felipe González has once again criticized Pedro Sánchez this Thursday for the response to the Ceuta crisis. Asked if the Executive should assume responsibilities after the publication of the declassified reports, the former socialist leader was blunt. "I have never seen him assume responsibilities," he replied.

González made these statements upon his arrival at a Madrid restaurant, where he was scheduled to participate in a lunch with former political officials, including former socialist spokesman Pedro Bofill. Before journalists, he defined the Government's actions as "manifestly improvable" and conveyed his "full solidarity" with Ceuta and its citizens.

The former leader recalled the words spoken by Sánchez last July 31, one day after more than 70,000 people crossed the border from Morocco. The President of the Government then described what happened as a "violation of Spain's territorial integrity," an assessment that González shares. "He defined exactly what had happened as what it was," he stated.

His intervention comes after it was learned that the National Intelligence Center (CNI) communicated the day before the crisis the existence of calls on social networks to try to cross into Ceuta. Moncloa defends that no agency anticipated the magnitude of the massive entry and distinguishes that message from a formal intelligence alert.

González avoided going into the specific content of the documents and focused his criticism on the subsequent political management. To reinforce his argument, he recalled that he was at the head of the Government for fourteen years and presented the Ceuta of that period as "an example of coexistence between cultures and solidarity between the different communities." "There was not a single moment when we suffered a conflict like the one we are suffering now," he boasted.

The newspaper archive nuances González's account

The scale of the current crisis is unprecedented, although the image of complete tranquility that González has drawn leaves out a serious episode that occurred under his mandate. On October 11, 1995, the so-called El Ángulo riots in Ceuta pitted sub-Saharan immigrants, agents, and residents against each other after months of overcrowding and institutional abandonment in an old disco in the Royal Walls.

That day ended with around 150 people arrested and at least 16 injured, among them a police officer who received a shot to the chest. The incidents provoked a public confrontation between the then Minister of Interior, Juan Alberto Belloch, and the city president, Basilio Fernández, who went as far as to mutually demand each other's resignation. The episode is remembered as the first major conflict related to irregular immigration recorded in Spain.

González's words add to a long succession of attacks against Sánchez and the current socialist leadership. in June 2025, the former president announced that he would stop voting for the PSOE if the head of the Executive ran again as a candidate and described the amnesty law as "political corruption". Since then, he has continued to intervene against parliamentary pacts and the strategy set by Ferraz.

The former secretary general also assured this Thursday that he does not fear a coalition between the Popular Party and Vox. "That is what many people have sought for a long time. That is the scenario some are aiming for," he replied, without clarifying to whom he attributed that objective.