The Two Enclaves

Nobody likes to lose a bit of country under their watch. It’s bad for their reputation, their future in public life and their place in the history books. The citizens won’t like it either.

Apart from any other consideration, the Spanish Government was not going to let go an empty and useless uninhabited island which is a tenth of a square kilometre in size and located 250m off the coast of another continent. Perejil (Wiki) was not to be lost as we saw in 2002 when a few Moroccan cops tried to establish themselves on the island, to be quickly removed by Spanish army units.

So Catalonia… (at 32,000km2, or 6.3% of Spain and 16.3% of the population). ’Nuff said.

But, let us return to North Africa.

The Cairo-based Arab Parliament (Wiki), no doubt goosed by King Mohammed VI, has ruled that Melilla and Ceuta are now officially ‘Moroccan Cities’. We read from RTVE that ‘…The body highlighted "the Arabism of the Moroccan cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the occupied Moroccan islands, and the need to open this issue as a relic of the colonial era"…’.

This will understandably not fly with the Spaniards (or indeed the European Union).

We see this in the light of, on the one hand close economic ties between Morocco and Spain, and on the other, the issue of the Western Sahara, (was Spanish, is now either Moroccan or independent – the fault of poor politics going back to 1985). The ambivalence of the USA is not helping much here…

The Spanish have an (obscure) argument to justify the two outposts – that they were there before Morocco was invented. A bit like making the point that Louisiana predates the United States of America (although the French have been most understanding). A better defence is that Melilla and Ceuta have, in residence, 180,000 people who like things just the way they are now.

For the Moroccan point of view, Spain controlling those two enclaves (plus the notorious Isla de Perejil and a couple of other tidbits) is a provocation of sorts.

A bit like Gibraltar, perhaps. Indeed, from Morocco World News (June 9th) we read ‘As the Spanish demands for the return of Gibraltar under their territorial control grow louder, so should the Moroccan calls for the liberation of Ceuta and Melilla’.

From BBC News here ‘…"Sebtah and Melilah" (as they are known beyond the frontier) are the only piece of European territory on mainland Africa - a political and legal reality that has never been recognised by Morocco…’. It quotes an unidentified publication as saying: ‘…"It's a Muslim land no matter for how long the occupation lasts, an old wound that some think has healed, but it continues to bleed and there is no other cure than the re-conquest" is how one Arabic publication describes the sentiment…’.

Right now, worried by the recent brief ‘invasion’ of Ceuta by almost 10,000 people, including a number of bewildered schoolchildren, Spain is beefing up its supplies to the two city-states, or, as El País (partial paywall) says ‘The urgent plan to avoid the economic asphyxiation of Ceuta and Melilla’, including tourism and special tax regimes etc… Hell, maybe a few extra squaddies…

Open wounds like this rarely heal, however, and while Moroccan claims blow cold or hot according to other diplomatic concerns, the issue will remain on the books until a resolution is found.

  

 

Statesmanship

 

What’s the deal? Should the Government forgive the Catalonian separatists and grant clemency to the imprisoned nine?

How about the three on the lam in Brussels and Scotland (now once again with immunity)?

How about the many thousands of ordinary Catalonians who face fines or other punishment following the illegal pro-independence referendum from October 2017 (Wiki)?

An indulto is a ‘special measure of grace by which the competent authority forgives a person all or part of the penalty to which he had been sentenced by virtue of a final judgment’, says Google. You have to have been proven guilty by the court before you can be pardoned by an indulto. 

Pedro Sánchez has been warned (especially by the right-wing) that such mercy is misplaced and that he will lose support even from his own party-militants. Sánchez is however looking at statesmanship over politics, arguing that it is time to heal the problem rather than exacerbate it.

The Spanish – forgive the banal generalisation – don’t particularly like the Catalonians, but they don’t want them to ‘leave’. The issue is whether to use a strong stick or a carrot.

The right prefers the first, the left prefers the second.

Certainly, an important gesture from the Government in allowing ‘the political prisoners’ – who are serving between nine and fifteen years for sedition – to return to their homes is  overdue.

Arrayed against this proposal, which must first undergo a review of the rules before any announcement via a Council of Ministers can be made, we have the (PP-controlled) judges from the Supreme Court, the opposition parties (who intend to return to the Plaza de Colón for their photo opportunity on Sunday June 13th) and – as the right-wing media tells us – certain sectors of the PSOE itself (mainly those from the days of Felipe González).

Former governments have allowed indultos, pardons, at least for the lesser crime of corruption: there have been 155 signed off by the PP and 62 from the PSOE since 1996. José María Aznar signed the most with 139.

President Sánchez has so far not granted any indulgences.

‘Sanchez speaks of courage; the PP claim that it would be more courageous still to uphold the law’ – says the ECD here. ‘The police insist that Sánchez wants the pardon so as to hold on to power’ says the ABC (paywall) here. La Razón thinks that it’s ‘High Treason’ here.

On the ‘courageous side’ is former president Rodriguez Zapatero, who himself finally closed the chapter on ETA: "This decision can significantly help what all Spaniards want, which is for things to be better between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, both for the independence movement to lose strength and for dialogue to return", says Europa Press. 

As the left-wing elDiario.es says ‘They are in a hurry in their anger against the still non-existent pardon because they do not like to think that the Government can succeed in decompressing the Catalan problem’.