Spain's government is facing confusion after several media outlets cited a leaked police report alleging Moroccan authorities acted passively, and may have even helped push migrants by sea, during the late July mass crossing into Ceuta. The document concludes that the arrival of around 80,000 people in the Spanish enclave was not accidental.
The leaked version clashes directly with the account Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has maintained, in which he has repeatedly exonerated Morocco of any responsibility and pointed to people smuggling networks as the root of the crisis, alongside a disinformation campaign he has attributed to Russia and Israel.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska ordered the National Police to clarify the allegations contained in the leaked report. Shortly after, a senior police official denied that any document directly assigning blame to Morocco exists, a denial that has failed to calm the political tension stirred up by the leak.
Opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo accused the government of having known about Morocco's involvement and having "covered it up." Even more telling was the break by Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, a former Socialist justice minister and member of the European Parliament, who said it "is only obvious" that what happened "could not have occurred without some degree of permissiveness from Moroccan authorities," and called on the government to "act based on facts and evidence."
Lopez Aguilar's remarks, coming from within PSOE's own ranks, show that the controversy over Morocco's role is not only pitting the government against the opposition but is beginning to create cracks within the Socialist Party itself, at a moment when the government is struggling to contain a migration crisis that remains unresolved more than a month after it began.