Eduardo González
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has assured that the Podemos MEP Isa Serra received “consular assistance” after being detained and forcibly expelled by the Moroccan authorities, along with two other MEPs, when she tried to enter El Aaiún, capital of Western Sahara.
Sources from the Ministry have assured The Diplomat that Serra received “consular assistance, as is usual in these cases”. The Spanish MEP had travelled to El Aaiún on 20 February, together with two other colleagues from the parliamentary group The Left, the Portuguese Catarina Martins and the Finnish Jussi Saramo, but the Moroccan authorities did not even let them get off the plane and forced them to travel to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The three MEPs had organised a mission to Western Sahara to monitor compliance with the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that annulled the agriculture and fisheries agreements between the EU and Morocco.
The mission, which also sought to gather information on possible human rights violations and the extraction of resources by EU companies, was coordinated with the Polisario Front, “political representative of the Sahrawi people, as established in the resolutions of the United Nations and in the ruling of the CJEU itself”, according to the parliamentary group in a press release.
Following this incident, the group La Izquierda asked the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy of the EU, Kaja Kallas, and the President of the European Council, António Costa, to intervene to “defend the integrity of the European institutions in response to the illegal detention and expulsion of parliamentarians from Western Sahara”.
Once in Las Palmas, according to the Efe agency, Isa Serra denounced that the Government of Spain had not protected her or protected her rights as a MEP and asked the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to change “once and for all his position in support and complicity with Morocco”.
For her part, the leader of Podemos, Ione Belarra, declared through social networks that “the Government of Spain cannot be on its knees before Morocco while democratically elected Spanish public representatives are violated”, for which reason she demanded “that the Spanish, European and Moroccan authorities abide by their obligations, allowing them to carry out their work of observing Morocco’s violations of the recent ruling of the CJEU that annuls the agriculture and fisheries agreements between the EU and Morocco”.
With Isa Serra, there are already ten Spaniards expelled from Western Sahara in 2025: José Carmona, journalist from Público; Antonio Martínez and Sergio García, activists from the Coordinator of Associations of Friendship with the Sahara; the Basque parliamentarians Mikel Arruabarrena (PNV), Amancay Villalba (EH Bildu) and Jon Hernández (Sumar); Francisco Carrión, journalist from El Independiente; the journalist Asier Aldea and the youtuber Rama Jutglar, apart from the Podemos MEP herself.
The representation of the Polisario Front in Spain has expressed, in a press release, its “strongest condemnation of this expulsion, as well as all those carried out by the Moroccan occupation forces in recent weeks.” “Morocco systematically denies entry into Western Sahara to journalists, activists and political representatives with the aim of hiding the human rights violations to which it subjects the Sahrawi civilian population,” it continued. “Unfortunately, today’s expulsion is not an exception. However, it is a clear sign of Morocco’s great feeling of impunity, given that it has even affected members of the European Parliament,” it added.
For his part, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said on Tuesday that his country “fully exercises its sovereignty over its southern provinces, as well as over the entire national territory” and that, “like other countries in the world, any visit to Morocco, whether official, tourist or for specific missions, is subject to clear organizational procedures within a regulated framework, in accordance with the laws in force.” “Anyone who respects these rules is welcome,” but the law will be applied “to those who try to break it, as happens in other countries,” he warned.
