Borders

It seems that King Felipe VI, during his visit to Ceuta after the immigration crisis, literally said that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country are not negotiable: they are indisputable”.

I do not believe that as head of state it is appropriate for him to make these kinds of clearly political statements, or perhaps it is that he does not even realize what he is saying or what he is reading that they write for him and he sees himself under the obligation to recite. Or surely he believes that the simple defense of what the Constitution says is not doing politics, when it turns out that the Constitution is reformed every time it is necessary or required: thus in the year 92, to allow the vote of Europeans in municipal elections; in 2011, to limit the deficit and public debt; or in the year 2024, when it was desired that the 'sacred' text be modified because, a child of the era in which it was drafted, it spoke of 'physically disabled' and now we want to call them 'people with disabilities'. Even this year 2026 it has been retouched and no one has wanted to say much about it; to allow Formentera to have its own senator they have had to change article 69.3.

I mean that when necessary, reforms of the sacred text are indeed made, and what is untouchable simply becomes the fruit of the pact to reach wherever interests the masters of the country. And everything is the result of history, which if we look into it is very clear: Ceuta, for example, was Portuguese, because in the 15th century the king there usurped it from the Muslims. When a century later, the King of Spain also becomes King of Portugal, Ceuta becomes Spanish, a fact that does not change when Portugal recovers its independence in the year 1640. King Philip IV, it seems, is not like King Philip VI: he knew that borders move as it suits. And Melilla? Well, the Spanish made it their own at sword point in the year 1497, shortly after the 'conquest' of Granada. And wouldn't it be logical that, with the decolonization of Africa that was experienced in the 20th century, both cities should now return to being Moroccan? But since they were occupied and usurped before colonial times, the UN does not consider them territories pending decolonization. They are colonies from before colonial times, just as Catalonia could be considered. And who should decide what to do with these territories? The Spanish as a whole? The Moroccans? The inhabitants of the cities in dispute?

Needless to say, it is easily conjecturable what would be decided if this issue were to be voted on, at any level. Whatever the monarch may say, history books do not lie: Spain has been losing territories for centuries, it shrinks as the years go by; more than thirty now-independent states are the result of the Spanish defeat of this supposed untouchable integrity: from the Philippines to Haiti, from Belgium to Malta, from Ecuador to Morocco, etc. If there is one thing that has been negotiable in the history of Spain, it is the borders or the integrity of what, in each era, is considered 'our country'. The only thing Spain has never negotiated is the right to declare as non-negotiable that which it will eventually negotiate.