MADRID, Spain – For some of the government’s partners, Pedro Sánchez’s refusal at this stage to point to Morocco as responsible for the mass entry of nearly 80,000 irregular immigrants is beginning to have a motive they previously did not mention and now dare not rule out: that the Alaouite regime may be in a position to blackmail the Spanish executive with some kind of compromising information obtained through the Pegasus system in 2022 from the mobile phones of some of its members, including Sánchez himself.
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Both Moncloa and Ferraz are trying to cut off at the root any speculation about the reasons why the government does not want to point to Morocco. In fact, on Monday the prime minister said he is absolutely not being blackmailed by Rabat and dismissed as a hoax the idea that the regime holds compromising information obtained through Pegasus. Until now, that thesis had remained practically confined to the PP and Vox. However, the executive’s resistance to holding the neighbouring country responsible, even after declassified documents revealed indications of passivity on the part of Moroccan authorities during the Ceuta crisis, is also beginning to fuel misgivings among its parliamentary partners. In this context, a suspicion that has hovered over the bilateral relationship for years has resurfaced: that Morocco could hold sensitive information obtained after the Pegasus infection of the phones of several government members, including Sánchez’s own. It is a hypothesis never publicly proven and one the executive refuses to entertain, but which some of its allies no longer rule out given the lack of a convincing explanation for Moncloa’s prudence with Rabat and its opacity regarding the bilateral relationship.
At the first meeting of the socialist leadership after the outbreak of the Ceuta crisis, the Morocco crisis monopolised the conversation. Ferraz’s line continues to be not to open, for now, a debate on political responsibilities. In the PSOE they insist that the focus should be on managing and closing the crisis, not on how it occurred or on publicly pointing to those who may have contributed to triggering it.
But on Monday, Podemos’s candidate for the general elections, Irene Montero, said she does not know for certain whether Morocco holds compromising information on government members, but that it seems quite evident that something is there and that in any case the Alaouite regime has a power that the executive is in one way or another granting it. During Sánchez’s appearance in Congress, Podemos had already hinted at this thesis, and the party’s secretary general, Ione Belarra, went so far as to ask what he owes Morocco. A few days later she went further and suggested that Morocco has too much information about the president.
Privately, Podemos sources say both leaders are pointing to something of common sense, adding that they have long said this resistance to pointing to Morocco is very striking and that for one reason or another they do not want to point in that direction and are protecting it. The thesis about Pegasus spying had until now always been defended by the opposition and other conservative partners such as Junts, which in recent weeks has directly asked government ministers how Morocco has them held to avoid pointing to it in the Ceuta crisis.
The one that had so far not expressed suspicions in this sense had been the PNV. But on Sunday its president, Aitor Esteban, pointed directly to the possibility that Morocco may have something we do not know that makes pressure on the Spanish government even greater and that it could be blackmailing it, adding that he would not rule it out.
Asked about this change in tone, sources from the nationalist parliamentary group say it is the one their congressional spokesperson has been using since the start of the crisis. She has indeed pointed out that the government maintains a stormy relationship with the Alaouite regime, but until now had not hinted that the neighbouring country could hold compromising information.
So far, no other partner points to this thesis, although some such as Bildu, which does not usually attack the executive in this legislature, has come to defend that whether for one reason or another Moncloa is acting as Morocco’s chump. In Sumar, a government partner of the PSOE, although they pressure the socialists to point to the regime and have from the beginning defended that it is behind the mass entry into Ceuta, they do not want to enter into elucubrations of this type.
And Gabriel Rufián of ERC, although he called the executive pusillanimous during Sánchez’s appearance, defended that the fact that it continues to exonerate the Alaouite regime has two explanations: one conspiratorial, related to Morocco holding compromising information, and another that a war that they cannot win has been put on the table.
Within the PSOE, different readings coexist regarding the hardening of the discourse of some of its partners with respect to Morocco. Some socialists opt for caution, while others attribute these pronouncements to the political and electoral context and downplay their significance. We are in campaign, summarises an influential voice in the party, who considers that attacking Morocco comes free and allows formations like the PNV to mark distances from the government on a particularly sensitive issue. Along the same lines, other sources interpret these positions as a way of getting out of the predicament in the face of public pressure, with one deputy stating that Morocco is the villain par excellence but that it is important to have certainties and calling for suspicions not to be turned into accusations without conclusive proof.
It is also the line marked on Monday by the prime minister in an interview on La Sexta, in which he denied absolutely being blackmailed by Morocco and dismissed as a hoax the suspicion that Rabat could hold compromising information about him obtained through Pegasus, though he avoided attacking Aitor Esteban or any of his partners directly.
For his part, the leader of the PSOE in the Basque Country, Eneko Andueza, whose party shares a coalition with the PNV, tried on Monday to place Esteban’s words within the discursive framework of the right, stating that whoever consumes the opinions of the right and far right runs the risk of being infected, before reproaching him for his permanent habit of pronouncing on everything that happens in Spain and joking that he seems to miss his role as spokesperson in Congress.
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Moncloa, for its part, avoids entering both into clashes with its allies and into the substance of suspicions it considers lacking in proof. Within the executive they also do not offer a shared explanation for why some of their partners have now hardened their positions, with one minister responding that they must explain that themselves. That prudence contrasts, however, with the tone used on Monday by Óscar López, who expressed his disappointment with Aitor Esteban, of whom he said he had considered him a proportionate and balanced person, and described as intolerable that he fuels what he considers a conspiracy theory. The political problem for the PSOE is that a hypothesis that for months had remained practically confined to the PP and Vox is now beginning to make headway, albeit with varying degrees and nuances, among the parties on which Sánchez’s parliamentary majority depends, an uncomfortable suspicion that both Ferraz and Moncloa are for now choosing to overlook.
