The mobilization of the Muslim periphery reinforces the centered PP of Ceuta and localism, but turns its back on the PSOE

Both parties have capitalized on the social reaction to Vox’s invective against the Islamic confession of Ceuta by “pro-Moroccan fifth columnists” and “Spanish DNI”. The local far-right leaders, Juan Sergio Redondo and Carlos Verdejo, maintained this crusade until two days before the elections, promising to remove Easter from the Sacrifice and the end of Ramadan from the work calendar.

Only Santiago Abascal winked at those 45,000 voters during his visit to Ceuta: “Vivas has condemned 20% of Ceuta to live in a ghetto, 15,000 people from a neighborhood with many families condemned to see their children without a future, robbed and shot… We are going to fight it: immigrants to their country and to the drug traffickers, lead or jail,” announced the extremist leader, whose party advocates attracting population from the peninsula to “re-Hispanicize” the city, in which he won in the last generals

The result of the last elections leaves the PP, which has garnered a thousand more votes than in 2019, with nine deputies, the same as the last legislature, and the PSOE with six seats, one less. The Socialists will continue to be the first opposition group by a hair’s breadth, ahead of Vox (which has lost one and is left with five), the MDyC (three, one more) and Ceuta Ya! (two, twice as many as before).

Neither pacts with Vox nor coalition with the PSOE

In this scenario, Vivas will be able to chain 26 years at the head of the local Executive relying on the localists even within his government, an option that he does not rule out, or in more or less stable agreements with the Socialists, as up to now.

As soon as he certified his sixth consecutive victory at the polls, he reiterated that one of his red lines is Vox, a party that he will not approach again so as not to put coexistence between communities at risk (“It is no longer just political, but personal with its radicals local leaders”, warn sources close to Vivas). Another, to govern in coalition with the PSOE, whose leader, Juan Gutiérrez, sees delegitimized almost even to lead the opposition after a campaign in which, convinced that he was going to devastate, the socialist has broken bridges to the right and left.

The socialist general secretary drew up a list with half of its members from the Muslim community and put together a campaign narrative in which the PSOE, with an extraordinary display of media, presented itself as an “unstoppable red tide” that would bring “change real” to a Ceuta in need of “equality” between the center (among the 1% of the richest neighborhoods in Spain, stronghold of the PP and with an eminently civil servant and Christian-Western neighborhood) and the Arab-Muslim periphery penalized by unemployment , substandard housing and school failure.

His bet has been unsuccessful, although Gutiérrez denies that it was a “failure.” “Why are you going to vote for the substitute if you have an original one?”, asks the sociologist Carlos Rontomé about the failed takeover bid by the socialists to localism, from a historically Muslim electorate, which has absorbed the rise in participation in the suburbs, for the first time time in the environment of 55% even in the Prince. Adding up their votes, Hamed and Mustafa would be almost 7,300 ballots above both the PSOE (7,158 after leaving 1,500 in all districts) and Vox, despite the fact that their votes in the center are as few as those of the extreme right in the neighborhoods .

“I have understood the message that the youth and the neighborhoods have sent us with their votes: we must speak openly about a city divided in two, be honest and not use ‘coexistence’ as a censorious expression”, interprets Mohamed Mustafa, who made his debut as a candidate for the presidency of the city with a speech as focused on combating “inequalities” as on appealing to the need to end the “hogra”, the “humiliation” of Muslims, the concept that made him cry in the closing of the campaign

The popular reaction reflected in sections of the suburbs with up to 10 points more participation than in other elections has not received “any push in the mosques”, according to sources familiar with the latest sermons delivered in them, in which years ago sometimes yes it has been suggested or recommended to support candidates of the same denomination. It has benefited from the fact that abstention has been higher this time in the central districts that support the PP and Vox.

“Commitment” and “credibility”

Mohamed Ali, historical leader of Ceuta localism, who left politics a year and a half ago, believes that voters have rewarded localists for their “commitment” and “credibility” in the face of the somewhat “unfocused and erratic” commitment of the PSOE de Gutiérrez, who began to derail by not knowing how to explain why he was opposed to the municipalization of the garbage service (he works for his current concessionaire as general manager) that the PP has promised to promote.

In the final stretch of the campaign, the socialist refused to go to the agreed face-to-face meeting with the PP leader, a much better speaker, demanding that he immediately dispense with his ‘number 3’, also counselor Kissy Chandiramani, after being summoned to testify as being investigated in mid-June after being denounced by a former party colleague for document falsification.

“The PSOE,” analyzes a veteran socialist from the periphery on condition of anonymity, “has not only neglected its traditional electorate in the center and some popular neighborhoods, but has also appeared in Hadú or Príncipe with people who in many cases It was not known for its social prestige, but for being close to dealings, and the campaign has shown the shortcomings of its candidate.

Making the flag of his management of the four crises of the last legislature (the pandemic, the closure of the border for more than two years, the 2021 migration and the social crisis opened by the extreme right) as a guarantee of “stability” to lead Ceuta towards a “green, blue and intelligent” future, at the age of 70 Vivas set a double condition to not leave politics: to be the most voted and to improve his results in 2019. He has achieved it.

He has not revalidated the absolute majorities that he achieved between 2003 and 2019, as he wished, but he has reconquered part of the suburbs for the Popular Party, where they are sure that from Genoa they will not be forced to come to terms with Vox in Ceuta even if they need the extreme right to get there to La Moncloa after the generals.

“In addition to being a political animal, Vivas has baraka”, they joke around him about a leader whom Casado’s team saw exhausted and urged to leave, but whom Feijóo has shielded freedom of decision in Ceuta. “The advancement of the generals has benefited him,” they believe, “because now he can form a monocolor government from the outset and in a month, after 23J, with a lot of time still ahead to agree on the 2024 Budgets, come to an understanding with the localists or with the PSOE.