'Pragmatic international relations: Sánchez seeks to avoid 'further conflict with Rabat'
Delano D'Souza is pleased to welcome Alana Moceri, International Relations Professor at IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs. She sees the Ceuta migrant crossings as a both a domestic and international crisis. The scale and speed of the crossings point toward what she calls a form of "deliberate permissiveness" at the border and Pedro Sánchez's restrained response is understood less as exoneration of Morocco than as pragmatic international relations. Sánchez faces pressure at home from political opponents able to frame migration as an existential crisis. She extends the argument further by showing how such episodes become politically valuable after they occur: Spain's far right can amplify the language of "invasion," while hostile foreign information ecosystems can exploit an already volatile controversy without necessarily having created it. The result is a crisis in which the border is simultaneously a geopolitical instrument, a domestic political weapon, and an information battleground.