MADRID, Spain – The chief of staff at the Government Delegation in Ceuta, Gonzalo Sanz, has resigned following the controversy generated by the publication of declassified documentation from the National Intelligence Centre related to the events of 30 July. In the letter announcing his resignation, Sanz stated he was taking the decision without the slightest acrimony towards the delegate, because he knows that the Government Delegation worked tirelessly from the very first minute to secure action from the central government, aware that reports exist demonstrating the warning and alert work carried out from the delegation towards the various ministries.
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The resignation comes after it became known that Sanz received messages from the National Intelligence Centre via WhatsApp and held a telephone conversation of about 11 minutes with an intelligence service agent on 29 July, one day before the mass entry of migrants into the autonomous city. In one of the WhatsApp conversations a day before the mass entry, at 1.52pm on 29 July, the intelligence centre informed the Government Delegation in Ceuta that calls were being made on social media for an assault on the autonomous city by fence and by sea the following day at 8pm, taking advantage of Throne Day and the fact that Moroccan security forces would be tied up. In another message, the centre conveyed that there were two different groups on social media with a total of 180,000 followers, warning the delegation to grasp the scope of the dissemination, to which the delegation responded with a colloquial expression reflecting astonishment.
The Ceuta government authority itself indicated on Wednesday that it had not been informed of this conversation or any WhatsApp message from the intelligence centre and was therefore unaware of any alert in this regard. However, Gonzalo Sanz, who conveyed his decision to resign from the confidence position for personal and family reasons to Government Delegate Miguel Ángel Pérez Triano on Thursday, clarified that the fundamental reason is the discrepancy in versions with the delegate.
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He considers there to be an evident incompatibility between the delegate’s assertion that the written messaging information transmitted by the intelligence centre on 29 July was passed by his staff to the delegate that same day and the delegate’s statements in various media in which he claims not to have received information from him.
