Spanish columnist Luis María Anson accused Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's government of being "stunned and overwhelmed" by the crisis in Ceuta, writing that it had shown "general ineptitude" in handling the standoff with Morocco and now lacked a parliamentary majority.
In the opinion column, published in the "Canela fina" section, Anson wrote that Moroccan aggression against Ceuta, the Spanish city on Africa's northern coast that borders Morocco, should have prompted Spain's major political parties to unite against a common threat. Instead, he wrote, party interests once again took precedence over the national interest.
A call for historical unity
Anson argued that in the two decades following Spain's transition to democracy, such division would not have occurred, because the major democratic parties reliably set aside their rivalries to confront common adversaries.
He pointed to the 19th-century republican statesman Emilio Castelar, who in his book "Recuerdos y esperanzas" placed "the interest of the fatherland" above all else, in the same way, Anson wrote, that former prime ministers Felipe González and José María Aznar had done. He also cited the monarchist politician Antonio Maura, who argued in his "Estudios jurídicos" that political adversaries ceased to be adversaries whenever Spain's interests were at stake, as had been the case in Africa.
Government left 'overwhelmed,' Anson writes
Anson wrote that the government had been left stunned by the Ceuta crisis and proved incapable of handling a situation that overwhelmed it. He said much of the cabinet, with some exceptions, had been chosen for reasons unrelated to competence, and accused parts of the government of carelessness, laxity, inefficiency and incompetence, and in some cases ignorance and self-satisfaction. He wrote that Sánchez's popularity had fallen to levels never before seen for a prime minister in Spain's democratic era.
According to Anson, the invasion of Ceuta created an extreme situation demanding prudence, skill, firmness and flexibility, but the government instead resorted to short-term measures that came too late, were clumsy and resolved nothing.
Blame directed at Ceuta's president
Anson wrote that one government minister had tried to blame the crisis on the management of Juan Jesús Vivas, the president of the Ceuta autonomous city, whose handling of the situation Anson described as impeccable.
He also claimed the government had sought to have the King congratulate Morocco's monarch in order to disguise its own ineptitude, and that the King had been barred from visiting Ceuta to avoid comparisons with Sánchez, who Anson said had been booed by residents of the city.
'No government seriously understood,' columnist argues
Anson is a veteran Spanish journalist and writer, a former director of the ABC newspaper and the EFE news agency, and a member of the Real Academia Española.
He concluded that Spain does not currently have a government that functions properly, describing it as "in agony." He wrote that the government lacks a parliamentary majority, has failed for three years to pass the General State Budgets, and has struck agreements with Bildu, the Basque party he described as tied to former ETA militants, as well as with Basque and Catalan separatist parties. He also wrote that the government was compiling a new electoral census in an effort to avoid what he called a catastrophe in the next general election.
