One fixation to bind them all...

Recent events in Ceuta have brought out a whole load of what I like to call 'the single issue thinkers' out into the open. These people have one way of looking at every single thing that happens in the world.

So yes, you have your 'Pedro Sánchez, hijo de puta' cohorts in Spain, but elsewhere we are seeing plenty of the 'Muslim Invasion of Europe', the 'This is all Israel's doing', or indeed 'just blame Trump' mobs and there are always the so-called liberals who are quick to deploy the 'anti-colonialism' smokescreen, not because it assists with understanding or even dealing with the actual situation, but because it helps smother any anxieties they might feel about the complexities of the contemporary world.

With regards to Ceuta these complexities would seem to involve some fairly recent decisions by Spain with regard to its gas supplies, e.g. doing a deal with Algeria which the Moroccans feel is prejudicial to their own interests (all this following supply issues in the Gulf owing to the on-off shooting war transpiring over there) and so it would seem that the Moroccan government has chosen to stoke up the migratory, self-bettering instincts of its own population by way of revenge. This is almost certainly an over-simplification. Pedro Sánchez is still a bit of an hijo de puta, and so on.

In the case of Morocco the 'colonialism' issues are also a bit more complex than many are willing to acknowledge (especially those for whom colonialism is their very own single issue thought process.)

As per Guatemala, the dominant culture post-independence was basically the same as the one prior to it, albeit a Middle Eastern one not a European one (and as such possessed of its very own smokescreen).

Abuses against any internal groups who visibly showed signs of non-participation in this transferred hegemony continued long after 'self-determination' was achieved, and just as they were here, suppression leading to oppression of indigenous tendencies was arguably significantly worse in the more recent post-colonial era.

Pedro Sánchez might well be a monster hypocrite when it comes to 'settler colonialism', and yet Morocco's claim on Ceuta is beset with many of the same basic problems and double standards as say Argentina's over the Falklands, and unlike the Argies, the Moroccans are right now actively carrying on like an aggressive, old-school colonial power at the margins of their own territory — as they seek to put an end to the Sahrawi movement of national liberation.

In ancient times when the Greeks and Carthaginians were doing their settler colonialism thing, the area was known as Abylya. The Romans then named it Septem Fratres (Seven Brothers), shortened to Septem, and following Islamic conquest, this morphed into the Arabic Sebta, which the Castilians later shifted to Ceuta.