Ignacio Cembrero: Spain’s laxity in front of Morocco and the UK

At the Gibraltar border, the Spanish government is rushing to implement the agreement between the European Commission and the United Kingdom before it officially takes effect on the 15th of July. It expects that, starting on that date, all police and customs checks between Spain and the British colony—which will be incorporated into the Schengen Area of free movement across much of Europe—will be eliminated.

Since late winter, Gibraltarians and British residents of the Rock have been able to cross the border into La Línea (Cádiz) by simply showing their red ID cards, without their entry being recorded by the police or their passports stamped to monitor the length of their stay. Police officers were thus following an unwritten directive from the Ministry of the Interior.

Since late last week, all other residents of Gibraltar can do the same, according to police sources. The measure affects, for example, Russians, Moroccans, and others living on the Rock who hold a green ID card and who, under normal circumstances, would require a Schengen visa to enter Spain and the other 28 countries that make up that free-movement area.

With the United Kingdom, the government is willing to pre-empt the new treaty, in breach of the law; with Morocco, it does not demand compliance with the customs agreement that has been signed.

The directive did not reach the police officers stationed at the border through official channels, but rather via a simple WhatsApp message. They immediately requested that it be communicated to them formally, but by the end of the weekend, the order had not reached them in a formal format.

To pre-empt the entry into force of the agreement on Gibraltar between the Commission and the United Kingdom amounts to breaching the Schengen Borders Code at that border and also bypassing the newly introduced Entry/Exit System, which has been in operation in practice since 10 April at Spain’s international airports.

The complacency towards London and the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo – whom President Pedro Sánchez invited to his progressive summit in Barcelona in April – contrasts with the government’s submission to Rabat’s demands. With the United Kingdom, the government is willing to pre-empt the new treaty, in breach of the law; with Morocco, it does not demand compliance with the customs agreement that has been signed.

That agreement was set out in the roadmap announced on 7 April 2022 following the dinner hosted by King Mohammed VI for Sánchez in Rabat. It took almost three years for the customs posts in the autonomous cities on the Moroccan border to open. This was, according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, a “historic milestone”.

These customs posts are not operational due to the obstacles imposed by Morocco, which is determined to strangle Ceuta and Melilla. “The so-called ‘ghost’ commercial customs post is nowhere to be seen,” stressed the Movement for Dignity and Citizenship (MDyC), a small Ceuti political party with a Muslim background, in a statement issued at the weekend. The Spanish government has not lodged a complaint with Rabat over the failure to honour this commitment, just as it did not protest in August 2018 when the old Melilla customs post, which had been open for a century and a half, was suddenly closed.

Even more serious than the customs deadlock is the ordeal one must endure to travel from the cities to Morocco and vice versa. It is no longer just “the queues of cars stuck for hours” trying to cross the border, but “the queues with hundreds of citizens waiting out in the open, including children, the elderly and people with health problems”, continues the MDyC, echoing the general discontent. “If this is what it was like in February or April, what are we going to face in the middle of July or August?”, when the heat is at its peak and Operation Paso del Estrecho reaches its height, it concludes.

The same is happening in Melilla, where, at the end of March, the Muslim Community sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, denouncing that ‘every day thousands of people are forced to endure long hours of waiting’ to enter or leave Morocco via the Beni Enzar border.

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They chose the wrong interlocutor. The delays are primarily due to the slowness and thoroughness of Moroccan border controls, where customs officers generally do not apply the so-called ‘traveller’s allowance’ scheme, which allows travellers to bring gifts for family members or small purchases made in Spain. Officials have even gone so far as to seize unopened packets of biscuits and sealed bottles of mineral water.

Added to this is the migratory pressure on Ceuta, which Morocco is not curbing, unlike in the Canary Islands or the mainland where it is making efforts to do so. In the first four months of this year, a new record was set with the arrival of 2,101 irregular migrants, 330% more than during the same period last year, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The Unified Association of Civil Guards also asserts that “the migratory pressure is far greater than that reflected in the statistics published by the Interior Ministry”, which tend to downplay it.

Ministers or government representatives have never been heard to raise their voices against Morocco, not so much because of the customs blockade, but because of the somewhat humiliating treatment inflicted on the people of Ceuta and Melilla who travel to and from the neighbouring country, where they have families and used to own second homes that they have often sold to avoid facing the border issue.

The leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, celebrated Europe Day in Ceuta on Saturday to highlight the city’s European character, but he forgot to mention that neither at Europe’s borders – nor at Morocco’s international airports – are travellers treated with disrespect or subjected to humiliation, as is the case less than three kilometers from Plaza de África, the very spot where he delivered his speech.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. Ignacio Cembrero is a Spanish journalist who writes about North Africa and Muslim communities. This article was originally published in El Confidencial.

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