Luis Ayllón
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has no immediate plans to replace the ambassadors to Morocco and Algeria, The Diplomat has learned from authoritative sources.
Despite the fact that both Ricardo Díez-Hochleitner in Rabat and Fernando Morán have exceeded the usual four-year term at the helm of an embassy, the current circumstances have led the government to continue to maintain them.
Díez-Hochleitner has beaten all records for the tenure of a Spanish ambassador in an embassy, as he has been in the post for more than eight and a half years, for which he was appointed by Mariano Rajoy’s government, and he also reached the retirement age for civil servants -70 years- on 30 June.
For his part, Fernando Morán was appointed ambassador to Algeria in September 2018 and already at the end of 2021, when it was thought that he could be relieved after the summer of 2022, Albares announced an extension of one more year.
The sources consulted by The Diplomat indicated that the government does not consider this to be the most appropriate moment to change the ambassadors in the two most important Maghreb capitals for Spain, preferring instead to use their experience to contribute to the goal of normalising relations with the two giants of the region.
In the case of Morocco, after Albares’ trip to Rabat on the 14th, during which it was not possible to unblock one of the most eagerly awaited issues in Spanish-Moroccan relations, namely the reopening of the commercial customs office with Melilla and the opening of a new one in Ceuta, the Government’s objective is to schedule a visit by Pedro Sánchez to Rabat.
The head of the Executive plans to return to Morocco to be received by King Mohammed VI, after he did not attend the High Level Meeting (RAN) held in February, a snub that Moncloa did not expect after Sánchez’s support for Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
Sánchez’s new visit to Morocco is intended to take place in the first quarter of the year and, in this situation, it is not considered the most appropriate to relieve an ambassador who is well regarded by the Alaouite monarch, who was secretary general of the Household of His Majesty the King and who has kept relations with Rabat alive at complicated moments, such as the recall for consultations of the ambassador in Madrid, Karima Benyaich, after the reception, in April 2021, of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, in a Spanish hospital.
As for Algeria, the sources consulted point out that the Government values the efforts made by Fernando Morán to avoid a further deterioration of bilateral relations during the nineteen months in which the Maghreb country has not had an ambassador in Madrid, as a result of the recall for consultations of its diplomatic representative in protest at the turn taken by Sánchez in relation to Western Sahara.
Now that relations with Algiers have begun to mend with the Algerian authorities sending a new ambassador to Spain, Abdelfetá Daghmun, who has just arrived in our country, the government considers that Morán’s continuity could be useful, both politically and economically.
