Spain’s defence minister Margarita Robles declared that any aggression against Ceuta or Melilla amounts to an attack on the entire nation, pledging that the government and armed forces will not abandon the North African enclave after King Felipe VI announced a forthcoming visit to the territory.
Touring the city and meeting its president, Juan Jesús Vivas, Robles said the mass crossings of late July must never be repeated and called for the full weight of the law to fall on the trafficking networks she said manipulated many of the 80,000 people who entered. She noted that troops have been devoted to protection and public support duties for eleven days.
Vivas, who dismissed Moroccan Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi’s territorial claims as baseless, said the influx constituted an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity and urged Madrid to launch a repatriation plan for migrants still in the city.