The Diplomat
The secretary general of the PSOE in Melilla, Gloria Rojas Ruiz, “totally” rejected the inclusion of Spanish cities on a map of Morocco posted on the website of the Moroccan Embassy in Madrid “as if they were part of that country’s territory”, reports Europa Press news agency.
The Socialist leader declared that “it is intolerable that anyone, either inside or outside our borders, should question our Spanishness and we will not tolerate it”.
The spokesperson for the Socialist Group in the Melilla Assembly also stressed that “Melilla and Ceuta are and always will be an indissoluble part of the Spanish nation”.
As the number one of the local Socialists recalled, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, “makes it very clear every time he states that Melilla and Ceuta are Spain, full stop”. “They are and always will be, just like Gijón, Toledo or Málaga”, she stressed.
Rojas made this statement after the president of the Autonomous City of Melilla, Juan José Imbroda (PP), this weekend asked the Spanish Government for “a formal protest” over the inclusion of the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla on a map as part of the territory of Morocco in an image hung in the Moroccan embassy in Madrid.
The head of Melilla has denounced this action by the Maghreb diplomatic legation in Spain as an attack on the territorial integrity of the Spanish nation. “It is another hostile aggression by Morocco against Spain, placing the Spanish Autonomous Cities of Ceuta and Melilla on an official map”, stressed Imbroda, who recalled the Alawite kingdom’s attempts to annex the two Spanish cities in North Africa.
Imbroda therefore called on the central government to react to this new aggression by the neighbouring country by including the two towns on its map. “I demand a formal protest from the government”, the Melilla president stressed, after recalling that “on 17 September Melilla will celebrate 526 years of belonging to Spain, 459 years before independence from Morocco” in 1956.
