Her connection with Aragon began precisely with the young man from Zaragoza who would later become her husband. They met while he was doing his military service, maintained their relationship and got married two years later. “I have been here since I was 17,” she recalls. Since then, she has built her life in Zaragoza, where her parents also lived after she brought them from Ceuta before they passed away. She now considers herself “from Zaragoza,” but talking about the city where she was born still stirs something inside her.
That is why she did not want to miss the gathering this Wednesday. The heat was still intense late in the afternoon, but Plaza del Pilar gradually filled with thousands of people, many carrying Spanish flags and messages of support for the autonomous city. Loli watched the crowd in disbelief. “I didn’t expect this much support. It’s wonderful, it’s fantastic,” she acknowledged. When asked what it meant to encounter such a response hundreds of kilometers from Ceuta, a few tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s an incredible emotion,” she said.
Concern was also very much present in her words, as Loli remains in contact with relatives and friends who still live in Ceuta and says she receives troubling news from them. “I hope things get better every day,” she explained. She is particularly worried, she said, that people close to her have told her they are afraid to go out alone in the street. These are accounts she hears directly from people she knows and which have led her to follow everything happening in her hometown from Zaragoza every day.
FIFTEEN YEARS WITHOUT RETURNING TO CEUTA
Loli has not returned to Ceuta for around fifteen or sixteen years, although she intended to do so in 2026. The situation in recent weeks has ultimately changed her plans. According to her account, people there have advised her not to travel for now. That does not mean she has lost touch. “I see it every day,” she explained about the updates she follows through social media. The distance between Zaragoza and Ceuta has never meant a loss of connection for her.
That is precisely why she considers the gatherings held this Wednesday in different parts of Spain especially important. “It is time for them to see that we exist there,” she said of Ceuta and Melilla. She did not seek to offer any major political analysis and believes that what happened goes beyond parties and ideological interests. “I don’t know much about politics, but I adore my Ceuta,” she summed up.
