NATO’s Defense Pledge for Spanish Enclaves Ceuta and Melilla in Question

According to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the NATO member states will react jointly to any armed attack against the territory of any of them. This military aid will only apply when these attacks take place in Europe or North America, or in the insular territories of the Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer, as specified in Article 6 of the text.

To read: Far-Right Vox Party Seeks NATO Protection for Spanish Enclaves Ceuta and Melilla

A few days after the massive influx of Moroccan migrants into Ceuta in May, the Vox party had presented to the Defense Commission in Congress a proposal asking the government to take steps to include the autonomous cities under NATO protection. The far-right formation deplored the fact that neither Ceuta nor Melilla had such military protection to face "a possible attack or invasion" by Morocco.

In the same vein, the leader of the Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casado, also asked the government to raise this issue with the Atlantic Alliance so that the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, which are an integral part of Spanish territory, are "under the aegis of NATO".

To read: Spain Seeks NATO Protection for Ceuta and Melilla Ahead of Biden-Sanchez Meeting

According to the Newtral website, citing sources from NATO and expert analyzes, the fact that Ceuta and Melilla are not in the treaty does not mean that NATO cannot intervene in the event of an attack, in the sense that "the decision to invoke Article 5 ultimately is a political decision that is made on a case-by-case basis". In a recent article, the Royal Elcano Institute insisted that "an extension of the concept of ’armed attack’ to include Ceuta and Melilla would be of greater deterrent utility for Spain because it would indirectly extend the coverage of the greatest foreseeable risk to Spanish territorial integrity. In this case, the notion of ’strategic distance’ could be invoked with a broad interpretation of Article 5 to at least apply crisis management".

To read: Poll: Most Spaniards View Morocco as Threat to Ceuta and Melilla Sovereignty

For his part, Francisco Javier Ayuela Azcárate, a retired marine infantry colonel, argued in an article published in Global Strategy that the 2010 strategic concept, as well as the final declarations of the Wales Summit in 2014, the Warsaw Summit in 2016, the Brussels Summit in 2018, and the NATO Leaders’ Meeting in London in 2019, represent the political will of the Allies and help clarify the current situation of Ceuta and Melilla within the Atlantic Alliance.