Demands for accountability are also now coming from Sánchez’s own coalition government.
The junior partner in the executive, Sumar, has long questioned Rabat’s role in the crisis, and on Wednesday one of its member parties demanded Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska — who has always attributed the surge to human smuggling mafias — to step down if the information in the police report is proven to be true.
“Not a leaf stirs in Morocco without the government knowing about it, and between 70,000 and 80,000 people don’t move en masse to the Ceuta border in trucks or on foot without being detected,” said Antonio Maíllo, coordinator of the United Left party, which is part of Sumar. “The Moroccan government’s involvement in the crisis is obvious.”
The government’s parliamentary allies — among them the Republican Left of Catalonia and the Basque Nationalist Party — are expected to grill Sánchez on who knew what when, potentially exposing just how little room the prime minister has left in an increasingly uneasy coalition.
That political isolation was also on display on Spain’s streets on Wednesday evening, with tens of thousands of protestors in participating in nationwide demonstrations condemning the situation in Ceuta. Protests were held in more than 260 cities, with dozens of Socialist mayors defying orders from the party leadership and taking part in rallies in support of the exclave.
Their revolt underscores Sánchez’s difficulty enforcing party discipline among local politicians who increasingly see him as a political liability. With municipal and regional elections next May, the protests are a stark sign of the prime minister’s fragile standing heading into a crucial political year.