Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will make an official visit to Rabat “in the coming days” at the invitation of the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI. As a result, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, suspended his visit to the neighbouring country, initially scheduled for today, and will accompany the head of the Executive on his trip.
Pedro Sánchez had a telephone conversation with Mohammed VI yesterday following Spain’s controversial decision to accept the autonomy plan for Western Sahara. This historic change of course in Spanish foreign policy was communicated in mid-March by the President of the Government in a letter to the Alaouite monarch, the content of which was not known until several days later and only at the request of the Moroccan authorities themselves. Both this foreign policy volte-face and the way in which it was made public have generated a great political storm in Spain.
During their conversation, released by Moncloa and of whose details Philip VI was informed, Sánchez and Mohammed VI addressed “the new stage opened in the relations between both countries”, a stage “based on transparency and permanent communication, mutual respect, compliance with the agreements signed by both parties, as well as the abstention from any unilateral action to live up to the importance of everything we share and to avoid future crises between our two countries”.
Likewise, Mohammed VI invited Pedro Sánchez to pay a visit to Rabat in “the coming days” to implement the roadmap that consolidates this new relationship. President Sánchez will travel to Rabat accompanied by José Manuel Albares, which is why the President of the Government and the Moroccan King agreed that the meeting scheduled for today in Rabat between the Spanish Foreign Minister and his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, will take place within the framework of the next visit of the President of the Government, as Foreign Ministry sources informed The Diplomat.
Ceuta and Melilla
For his part, Mohammed VI thanked yesterday, during his conversation with Pedro Sánchez, the letter in which Spain recognized the autonomy plan on Western Sahara, which opens “a new stage based on mutual respect, reciprocal trust, permanent consultation and frank and loyal cooperation”, as reported by the Moroccan Royal House through the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In its note, the Royal House also expressed its wish that the rapprochement between the two countries be translated into “concrete actions” and an “ambitious roadmap” covering “all issues of common interest”, but made no allusion to possible concrete commitments on territorial matters, specifically in relation to the sovereignty of Ceuta and Melilla and the territorial waters of the Canary Islands.
In the aforementioned letter from Sánchez to Mohammed VI, in which he declared that the autonomy plan for Western Sahara presented by Morocco in 2007 is “the most serious and realistic basis” for solving the conflict (and whose content was only made known in full by a leak to the newspaper El País), the President of the Government also assured that the objective of this new rapprochement with Morocco is “to guarantee the stability and territorial integrity of our two countries”.
Last Wednesday, the President of the Government appeared before the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies to explain the new direction in the relations with Morocco, an appearance in which it was very clear, once again, the firm opposition of all the parliamentary groups, including his allies and partners (with the well-known exception of the PSOE), to his decision to support the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
During his speech, in addition to assuring that Spain’s new position is “aligned” with that of countries such as the US, France and Germany and coincides with “the positions expressed by previous governments in Spain”, specifically those of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (PSOE) and Mariano Rajoy (PP), Pedro Sánchez assured that the will of the Government is “to establish with Morocco the relations that correspond to two neighboring countries, with such strategic importance in the field of migration control, economic and commercial relations, and also in the fight against terrorism”, and to help guarantee “the stability, prosperity and security of our country and also of two autonomous cities as important as Ceuta and Melilla”.
However, the President of the Government did not provide any information on the possible counterparts of Morocco regarding the sovereignty of these two towns, a question on which the opposition, especially the PP, has repeatedly asked the President of the Government, without response to date. During Wednesday’s session in Congress, the spokeswoman of the Popular Group, Cuca Gamarra, precisely asked Sanchez if Morocco “has given him any guarantee about Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands”, because “territorial integrity is not the same for Spain as it is for Morocco”.
Sánchez’s conversation with Mohamed VI has also coincided with the tour that the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, made this week in Morocco and Algeria. Shortly before the start of the trip, the State Department assured in a press release that “the United States continues to view Morocco’s autonomy plan as serious, credible, and realistic, with a potential approach to meet the aspirations of the people of Western Sahara,” terms that are almost exactly the same as those used by Pedro Sánchez in his controversial letter to Mohammed VI. Joe Biden’s administration has not rectified former President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the territory.
It so happens that Blinken’s ‘number two’, Wendy Sherman, also visited Algeria and Morocco earlier this month as part of a tour that included Spain. Sherman was received by Albares in Madrid on March 7, a little more than a week before Spain’s new course with respect to its former colony became known.
