Spanish Government Asked To Lodge A ‘Formal Protest’ After Morocco Includes Melilla And Ceuta On A Map

Juan José Imbroda, the president of Melilla, asked the Spanish Government this Sunday, August 20, to lodge a ‘formal protest’ against Morocco.

He denounced the inclusion of the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla on a map of the territory of Morocco that was shown on the website of the Moroccan embassy in Madrid.

Imbroda insisted that such an action by the Maghreb diplomatic legation in Spain was an attack on the territorial integrity of the Spanish nation, according to elconfidencialdigital.com.

‘It is another hostile aggression by Morocco against Spain, placing the Spanish Autonomous Cities of Ceuta and Melilla on an official map’, he stressed.

Imbroda demanded the Government makes a ‘formal protest’

As a result, Imbroda called on the Central Executive to react to this new aggression: ‘I demand a formal protest from the Government’, he insisted.

He went on to point out that: ‘On September 17, Melilla will celebrate 526 years of belonging to Spain, 459 years before the independence of Morocco‘, which occurred in 1956.

Josep Borrell stated that Ceuta and Melilla belong to the EU

The publication of the map of Morocco on the website of the Moroccan embassy in Spain comes days after Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union (EU), stated that: ‘Ceuta and Melilla are territories that belong to the EU and form part of its external border’.

Responding in writing to a question raised in the European Parliament, after Morocco complained about statements made in May by Margaritis Schinás, the Greek Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of migration, Borrell said: ‘EU law therefore applies to Ceuta and Melilla’.

Schinas angered officials in Rabat in May when they accused him of referring to the ‘hybrid threat’ posed by countries using migrants as ‘weapons’ during an interview.

The Greek politician said at that time: ‘It occurred for the first time on the Greek-Turkish border of Evros in 2020, and a few months later in the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa’.

He added: ‘All around us there are forces, regimes, leaders, authoritarian elements that will not hesitate to use human suffering and people as pawns in political operations to harm us’, as reported by hespress.com.