The Diplomat
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a formal complaint to the Government of Morocco for the installation of a fish farm in Spanish territorial waters near the Chafarinas Islands without the necessary permits.
According to Ministry sources, the protest was presented by means of a verbal note to the Moroccan Embassy in Madrid, whose head, Karima Benyaich, was called for consultations last May after the serious diplomatic crisis that broke out between the two countries due to the irregular entry into Spain of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.
Rabat has authorized a Moroccan company to install, without prior authorization, a fish farm in Spanish territorial waters, just 700 meters from the Charafinas archipelago and close to Melilla. Morocco does not recognize the territorial waters of the two autonomous cities and the Spanish rocks and islands, but has so far respected them. The navy ships patrolling around the Chafarinas had already warned for months that the construction of the fish farm was encroaching into Spanish waters.
The Executive has so far avoided making a public pronouncement on the installation of this fish farm, probably in order not to further complicate the particularly delicate moment in the relations between Morocco and Spain. When it seemed that the serious diplomatic crisis related to Ghali had been more or less overcome, in recent weeks two other possible fronts of friction have opened up: the installation of the fish farm and the agreement between the Moroccan National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM) and the Israeli company Ratio Petroleum Partnership for the exploration of potential pockets of oil and gas in an area of 109,000 square kilometers which includes the waters of Western Sahara and the southern Canary Islands.
On September 21, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, held his first conversation with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, since the outbreak of the bilateral crisis, the most serious in many years. During the telephone conversation, the two ministers agreed to hold “a face-to-face meeting in the near future”, but so far there has been no meeting in the two months since the conversation.
