The Diplomat
Spain exported defense material to Morocco in 2020 for a total value of 12.5 million euros, as revealed by an official report on exports of defense and dual-use material collected by the Europa Press agency.
According to the report on exports of defense and dual-use material in 2020, sent to the Congress of Deputies by the Secretary of State for Trade, Spain sold to the Moroccan Army, between 2016 and 2019, defense material (mortar shells, mortar spare parts, plastic explosives, detonators, detonating cord and slow fuse, or spare parts for armored vehicles and aircraft) valued at about 80 of million euros. In 2020, Spain’s military exports to the neighboring country reached 12.5 million.
The report will be presented this coming Thursday before the Defense Committee of the Lower House by the Secretary of State for Trade herself, Xiana Méndez, when more than a month has already passed since the outbreak of the serious diplomatic crisis between Rabat and Madrid due to the entry and hospitalization in Spain of the Polisario Front leader, Brahim Ghali, which was responded by Morocco with an uncontrolled flood of immigrants across the border with Ceuta.
The Institute for Security and Culture recently warned that Rabat is using hybrid warfare tactics against Spain in a strategy of “low intensity conflict”, which “is likely to go on for a long time with moments of relaxation and others of acceleration” and whose aim is to divert attention from its domestic policy failures and “to bend the position of some European countries on Western Sahara”.
The Trade report of the Secretary of State for Trade also indicates that the largest buyers of armament from Spain are the NATO countries and the European Union (Netherlands, Germany, France and the United Kingdom), to which 77.3% of exports go, and that Spain has also sold defense material to countries such as Saudi Arabia (48.3 million), United Arab Emirates (27.7), Myanmar (22 million euros), Algeria (11.9 million), Iraq (874,050 euros) or Israel (477,288 euros).
