Marrakech – Former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González has drawn a clear line on who is responsible for guarding Spain’s southern frontier. At the “Encuentro de Líderes” event organized by the Círculo Empresarial de Málaga on Thursday, he told the audience that the obligation to defend the border belongs to Spain, “not Morocco.”
González pressed the point on sovereignty. He rejected the idea that Rabat should be asked to guarantee Spanish control, even in the occupied city of Ceuta. “If they tell me Morocco has to guarantee our sovereignty… I say I don’t start there,” he remarked. Cooperation would be welcome, he added, but it was not where the matter begins.
He also cast his position as sympathetic to Morocco. González called himself “pro-Moroccan” and wished for the country’s development, so that young Moroccans who protest to leave would not have to, and could live in their own country.
His comments came against a crisis that, by his account, is becoming entrenched. Normality had not returned to the occupied city after the mass entry of migrants at the end of July. González urged the government to use the Permanent Deputation (Diputación Permanente) to take a serious step with all willing parties, noting that laws could still be changed.
Asked whether defending the border meant hot returns of migrants, he answered “without a doubt,” and “curiously with Morocco’s agreement.” Any legal change, he argued, should have been made on August 1 through an extraordinary session of Congress, with Rabat’s consent to take the migrants back.
The former leader’s stance stands apart from that of the sitting prime minister. On the RTVE program “La Revuelta,” Pedro Sánchez told host David Broncano that Morocco and Spain “had to make a decision to avoid more deaths.” He was blunt about Madrid’s dependence on its neighbor: “You need Morocco to stop that massive entry.”
Sánchez added that containing the pressure at the fences of the occupied cities of Ceuta and Melilla is nearly impossible without daily coordination with Rabat and the administration of King Mohammed VI. His remarks confirmed the weight Morocco carries in Spain’s day-to-day national security.
That dependence is precisely what Rabat has long declined to accept as an obligation. During the 2021 Ceuta crisis, triggered by Madrid’s decision to admit separatist Polisario leader Brahim Ghali for medical treatment, Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita told Europe 1 that Morocco is “neither Europe’s policeman nor its doorman, protecting borders that are not its own.”
Bourita’s argument ran deeper than that single episode. In December 2020, at the inauguration of the African Migration Observatory in Rabat, he refused the role of Europe’s migration police. He framed migration management as a shared responsibility among countries of origin, transit, and destination, rather than a burden placed on Morocco alone.
