Spain leapt to deflect attention from its open border crisis on Monday by asserting the unified revulsion at Ceuta crisis was so overwhelming it implies a conspiracy among the “international reactionary forces” to “spread lies and fake news”.
The Spanish city of Ceuta, an isolated exclave clinging to the north African coast surrounded by Morocco on one side and the Mediterranean Sea on the other shot again to global attention last week in just the latest in a years-long series of border incursions. The largest of its type yet, local authorities said between 50-60,000 people swam into Spanish — and therefore European Union — territory from Morocco in just 24 hours.
The astonishing social media footage of the mass incursion shot around the world and instantly elicited comment, but rather than a visceral reaction to extraordinary events, Madrid has cast the attention on the policy failures of their longstanding socialist government as a global right-wing conspiracy.
Speaking to Spanish state broadcaster RTVE on Monday morning national Minister of Foreign Affairs José Manuel Albares, a career diplomat who became a key advisor to socialist leader Pedro Sánchez, moved quickly to exculpate both Spain and Morocco in the affair and blamed the internet instead. This fake news online not only drove migrants to the border but shaped international reactions to it, he said, while appearing to imply a global right-wing network may even have had foreknowledge of the mass attempt to storm the border, given it was able to comment on it before the Spanish and Moroccan governments even knew what was happening themselves.
Albares stated there was, to his eyes, clearly a “synchronization of international reactionary forces which rapidly came out to amplify what is happening and also to spread lies and fake news about the Schengen zone, over its integrity, over the actions of Spain.”
Reinforcing his point, Albares again insisted the response of the right both in online spaces and by right-wing European politicians was “coordinated” last week. He went on: “I also highlight that the reactionary international came out in a coordinated way, with much speed, from the first moment, before even both we and Morocco could understand what is happening…
“…we must monitor and follow those social media to understand who is behind them, who is moving those hoaxes and those falsehoods which have unfortunately been amplified even by some European governments but that in any case the reality is that the reactionary international came out in unison to add themselves to those hoaxes. That reaction we have seen on social media from the reactionary international, we have to monitor and combat it clearly.”
The “reactional international” appears to be a neologism coined by Albares, a clear throwback to the old Socialist International; a movement his boss Prime Minister Sanchez is, coincidentally, a leading member.
Albares said he took his fear of a global right-wing conspiracy against Spain so seriously he would be bringing it up with the European Union and wants to see it “analysed” in Brussels.
European Union member states are meeting in Brussels on Tuesday for an extraordinary session to discuss their response to Spain’s Ceuta crisis. Far from sympathy with the right-wing phantoms proposed by the Spanish Foreign Minister, many governments have expressed outright frustration with Madrid’s flop of a response, and calls to suspend the country from Europe’s internal open borders zone abound.
For Albares’ part, this talk is a failure of European solidarity, he said, while also traducing domestic right-wing parties within Spain for “irresponsible statements” when they proposed enacting actual border control.
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