There is a place in Spain where no one wants to agree with Vox, not even the PP. The Executive of Ceuta, led by Juan Vivas (PP), which governs in a minority after the May elections with 9 of the 25 deputies that make up the Assembly, continues to seek to reach an agreement with the opposition parties that ensures governability for the next four years in an area with singularities – cultural, political and geographical – that do not occur in any other territory of the State. Singularities that leave Vox out of the equation, since the populists are also not willing to sit down and talk with the ultranationalists, despite the fact that with the sum of their five representatives they would achieve a majority. His speech is incompatible with that of coexistence in this border territory.
The paradox is that President Vivas, of the PP, was confident of agreeing with the Socialists, who with six deputies would have guaranteed a stable government, but despite the initial disposition of their local leaders, the leadership of the party in Carrer Ferraz has prevented the agreement . With the PP, nowhere, not even in Ceuta. This was the message. The deafness
Nevertheless, the local socialist leaders leave open the possibility of supporting some initiatives, as happened in the previous legislature. At the moment, the budgets or the land management plan are up in the air.
Vivas, on the other hand, tries to isolate the politics of Ceuta from the rest of the country and breaks with the dynamics of his party, in which Alberto Núñez Feijóo has given the go-ahead to numerous pacts with the ultra-nationalists. In Ceuta this option is unviable, “because we do not share the same city philosophy”, government sources point out to La Vanguardia. “We will not dynamit coexistence”, they point out. The discrepancies happen, PP sources say, because Vox “does not bet on coexistence” between the four different cultures that coexist in the city, “they go against the Muslim community and do not recognize it as Spanish despite having been born here, regardless of their religion, they bet on militarized borders and want to eliminate egalitarian education projects” and deny the scourge that “gender violence” represents.
“No one will agree anything with Vox, not now or in the future. It’s not a personal thing, it’s a unanimous thing”, confirmed Alejandro Ramírez, spokesman for the Executive.
The ultra-nationalists believe that Vivas – whom they have called “mafioso” and “cancer” – “is forced to grind with mill wheels and swallow what Sánchez’s cubs do and some kind of radical Islamists whitewashed under the label of progressive localism”, according to the leader of Vox in Ceuta, Juan Sergio Redondo.
The situation is complex and fragile. The PP asks for more commitment from the rest of the parties in the Assembly and particularly from the PSOE, one of whose spokespersons assures that “there cannot be a government pact with the PP of Feijóo”.
Vivas regrets that the socialists do not understand the particularities of the city and fears that sensitive initiatives will now be blocked. “We are facing a legislature in which decisions will have to be made, actions taken and positions set that will be decisive for Ceuta for the next decades and, moreover, because stability is a fundamental issue”, he stressed, and also emphasized that “Ceuta and Melilla are affected by threats and risks that do not occur in any other part of the State”.
Despite the indignation of the socialists, the president of Ceuta keeps open the line of communication with the opposition, the negotiations with the MDiC (3 deputies) of Fatima Hamed, who promoted the declaration of persona non grata of Abascal in Ceuta, approved two years ago with the abstention of the PP, while the door is not closed in Ceuta Ja! (2 deputies), led by Mohamed Mustafa, despite the fact that their policies on the border clash head-on.
