Senior Spanish official calls Sebta and Melilla “colonies” and demands a referendum

The pro-independence leader took a position in an interview given to the Sunday Times from Waterloo, Belgium, where he still resides.

“What sense does it make for a country in the European Union to possess two colonies or two cities inside Morocco?” asks Carles Puigdemont regarding Sebta and Melilla.

The former president of Catalonia also believes that Spain’s presence constitutes “a wound” from the Moroccan perspective. In doing so, he partly echoes the argument put forward by Rabat, which considers the two cities occupied Moroccan territories.

On Bladi.net : “Return Sebta and Melilla to Morocco”: an opinion piece published in El País sets Spain ablaze

Puigdemont’s position is not entirely new. As early as 2021, he had stated that Morocco had the right to raise the issue of sovereignty over Sebta and Melilla. His new statement nevertheless goes further by using the term “colonies” and proposing a popular consultation.

A referendum that could strengthen Spain

The Junts leader nevertheless acknowledges that the population of Sebta feels deeply Spanish. In his view, a self-determination referendum would precisely give democratic legitimacy to this choice.

His proposal therefore does not constitute a direct call for the two cities to join Morocco. Officially, it aims to let their inhabitants decide, even though the way Puigdemont presents their situation challenges Madrid’s discourse on their full historical belonging to Spain.

The former Catalan president directly links this issue to Catalonia’s independence struggle. He claims that Madrid would refuse to organise a referendum in Sebta or Melilla for fear of creating a precedent that the Catalans could subsequently invoke.

His statements come as the status of the two cities is once again sparking controversy in Spain. A few hours earlier, an opinion piece published in El País had called on Madrid to “return” Sebta and Melilla to Morocco, triggering numerous political reactions.

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The two interventions do not, however, defend exactly the same solution. The opinion piece proposes a negotiated handover to Morocco, while Puigdemont calls for a vote by the inhabitants, whose attachment to Spain he himself acknowledges.

For its part, Madrid considers Sebta and Melilla Spanish territories whose sovereignty cannot be negotiated. A recent poll moreover showed that 77.1% of Spaniards consider the two cities just as Spanish as the territories on the peninsula.

Questioned by El Español, Puigdemont thus places Sebta and Melilla within his broader defence of the right to self-determination. But by describing them as colonies located in Morocco, he reignites a particularly sensitive debate amid the ongoing crisis between Rabat and Madrid.