Spain is outraged by the new official map of Morocco, which includes Ceuta and Melilla

Spain is outraged by the new official map of Morocco, which includes Ceuta and Melilla

Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE, European Socialists and Democrats) of interim Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said it strongly rejects the recently released official map of Moroccan territory, which includes the Spanish autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, while the regional president of Melilla asked Madrid to send a formal complaint to Rabat.

The website of the Moroccan embassy in Madrid recently published a map on which Ceuta and Melilla appear as part of the territory of the North African kingdom.

Ceuta and Melilla are seen as hotbeds of migration on the EU’s southern border, a subject that is one of the main bones of contention between Spain and Morocco.

The PSOE section in Melilla expressed a “total rejection” of the map, while the regional president of Melilla, Juan José Imbroda, of Partido Popular (PP, European People’s Party), the centre-right main opposition force in the country, demanded that Madrid file a “formal complaint”.

Mr Imbroda believes that this is a “total affront to our nation, our Constitution, our history and our sovereignty”.

As negotiations on Spain’s governing coalition continue following the snap elections on July 23, Mr. Imbroda urged interim Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s executive to address “a formal and severe protest” to Morocco’s ambassador in Madrid, Karima Benyaich.

“It seems like an enormity, but it seems to me even more serious that our authorities, our representatives of the national government, have not opened their mouths” after this “interference and interference” in the sovereignty of the two autonomous cities, underlined Mr. Imbroda, reports regional newspaper Melilla Hoy.

The politician clarified that the inhabitants of Melilla feel “deeply and proudly Spanish” for almost 526 years, i.e. almost five centuries before “Morocco is born, on the political level”, gaining independence from France in 1956.

Euroactiv