CUETA, Spain: Mari Carmen Mata remains furious with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez over his response to the mass arrival of migrants in Ceuta, a crisis complicating the Socialist leader’s bid for re-election next month.
“We want nothing to do with him,” the 58-year-old nursing assistant told AFP in the center of the Spanish territory in north Africa.
More than two months after upwards of 70,000 migrants entered Ceuta from neighboring Morocco on July 30 and 31, life in the city, home to around 80,000 people, remains far from normal.
Most returned to Morocco in the following hours, but thousands have remained for weeks in often dire conditions.
A sense of abandonment among residents is giving fresh ammunition to the main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox ahead of an early general election on November 29.
Criticism in Ceuta — governed by the PP for more than 25 years — centers largely on the central government’s migration policy and what many see as a lack of firmness toward Morocco, which claims sovereignty over the territory.
“We thought our government was going to do something in the short or medium term, but we’ve been here for two months and these people haven’t been sent back,” said Ruben Gonzalez, gesturing toward groups of migrants still wandering through the city.
“Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus — we’re all on the same page. We feel abandoned here,” added the 33-year-old civil servant.
Gonzalez describes himself as a centrist voter but said he would vote for the right in the coming election.
Sonsoles Jimenez, a 51-year-old businesswoman, agreed, saying “in any other country they wouldn’t have allowed what is permitted here in Spain.”