Juanma Moreno has spoken out against plans to redistribute migrant children from Ceuta across mainland Spain, claiming it would create an ‘immediate and enormous pull effect’.

The Andalucia president joined a string of Partido Popular (PP) regional leaders on Monday in opposing the transfer of unaccompanied minors to Andalucia and beyond.

Up to 2,000 minors remain in the Spanish enclave following the mass illegal crossing on July 30 and 31.

Several branded what happened in Ceuta as an ‘invasion’ and argued that transferring migrants elsewhere in Spain would ‘reward’ those who had crossed the border.

The comments came as regional presidents gathered in Madrid to support Ceuta president Juan Jesus Vivas at an informational breakfast, where he was introduced by national PP leader Alberto Nuñez Feijoo.

Moreno said there were two fundamental reasons for opposing the transfer of minors to the mainland.

He claimed the EU had warned that the migrants ‘cannot set foot on the peninsula’ and argued that allowing them to do so would encourage further crossings.

‘The pull effect would be immediate and enormous’ if migrants ‘achieve their objective, which is to cross into continental European territory’, Moreno said.

His comments were echoed in even stronger terms by Murcia president Fernando Lopez Miras.

He said redistributing the children was ‘not the solution’, arguing that Spain could not ‘legitimise a directed and orchestrated act of invasion’.

Lopez Miras insisted migrants be returned to their countries of origin.

‘They should all return to their country, and if they are minors, it is even more important because they have to be with their family,’ he said.

‘An attack on our borders’

Valencian president Juan Francisco Perez Llorca also rejected redistribution, arguing that moving migrants from Ceuta would simply transfer the problem from one Spanish region to another.

‘You cannot solve the problem by creating a problem in other autonomous communities,’ he said.

‘That is distributing the problem.’

He added: ‘It is not an immigration problem, it is a problem of an invasion and, therefore, it has to be treated differently.’

Castilla y Leon president Alfonso Fernandez Mañueco adopted similarly tough language.

‘The root of the problem is the invasion,’ he said, describing the situation as ‘an attack on our borders’.

He argued that authorities should end the situation ‘as soon as possible’ by ‘returning all the migrants to where they came from’.

The question of what should happen to unaccompanied migrant children who remain in Ceuta has become one of the most politically contentious aspects of the crisis.

The PP’s increasingly hard-line rhetoric also comes amid evidence that immigration has risen sharply up the list of Spanish voters’ concerns.

Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.