Elma Saiz announced on Tuesday an extraordinary allocation of 25 million euros for the care of unaccompanied minors who have invaded Ceuta. It comes from the Treasury, passes through the Ministry of Youth and Childhood of Sira Rego, and lands via credit transfer in the Autonomous City, where it is added to the 5.5 million distributed a month ago at the Sectoral Conference on Childhood. Thirty and a half million in four weeks. The spokesperson for the Ceuta government puts the number of minors under guardianship at approximately one thousand. If both official figures are true, the emergency amounts to about 30,000 euros per minor. I do not dispute the allocation. I do the math, which is different. And after doing the math, my first question arises: where exactly is that money going?
Because certainly not into the pockets of the young people. The money goes to the system: places, warehouses fitted out at breakneck speed, schools converted, staff, maintenance, surveillance. Guardianship belongs to the City, which manages the La Esperanza center with its own resources, but the Ministry itself recalled this week that article 35.11 of the Immigration Law allows agreements with non-governmental organizations, foundations, and child protection entities. The law, that is, leaves the door to the concert open, and through that door people have been entering for years: the SAMU Foundation managed the emergency unit for minors in Ceuta under a concert regime from 2019 until its closure. Second question: which entities will enter now, with what amounts, and with what oversight? And third, the one that really interests me: how many of them will bring a chaplain?
It is not a gratuitous question. The Church is peering into Ceuta’s reception through all its windows: the diocese of Cádiz and Ceuta has just announced that parish collections will be channeled through its San Antonio Migrant Care Center «in coordination with the competent services»; the Franciscans of the White Cross operate in the city and Cáritas Diocesana de Ceuta recently presented its annual report. I wonder about the payroll.
The payroll explains what theology does not reach. Cáritas acknowledges in its own reports that around a quarter of what it handles, approaching thirty percent according to the fiscal year, comes from public administrations. The Jesuit Migrant Service, CONFER, Messengers of Peace, and Cáritas itself, which publicly supported extraordinary regularization, participate in calls for proposals, manage programs, and receive concert payments. And whoever lives off the concert does not argue with the one who signs the concert. There is no need to buy anyone: it is enough for them to depend. In the first book of Kings, the four hundred court prophets ate from Ahab’s table and prophesied victories to him; the only one who did not get paid, Micaiah, told him the truth and ended up slapped and on bread and water. When I hear our pastors before a border that has burst in a mass entry that the National Court is investigating as a possible coordinated operation, and I do not hear them cite number 2241 of the Catechism, which recognizes the authorities’ right to regulate flows in accordance with the common good, I wonder at whose table they eat. Fourth question: is meekness the Gospel or is it a budget?
These questions have a virtue: they are answered with papers. The agreements under article 35.11 are signed, published, and audited; transparency portals exist, and the diocese itself boasts of its own. Let the list of entities awarded those thirty and a half million be published, along with the amounts and concepts, and I will withdraw the questions one by one, starting with the one about the chaplain. Until the list appears, let no one accuse me of sowing suspicions: suspicion is not sown by the one who asks, it is sown by the one who remains silent with the answer in the drawer. Docility, in Spain, has always been quoted. All I ask is to see the bill.