Albares to make his first trip to Algeria this week since the bilateral diplomatic crisis

Eduardo González Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares will make his first trip to Algeria this Thursday and Friday since the outbreak and subsequent resolution of the diplomatic crisis between the two countries, triggered by Spain's decision to recognize Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara. "I want to take this opportunity to confirm that I will be traveling to Algeria this Thursday and Friday, to Algiers and Oran," Albares declared this Tuesday, March 24, at the Moncloa Palace complex during the press conference following the Council of Ministers meeting. "Algeria is a neighboring country, a strategic partner, a friend of Spain with whom we share strong common interests" in matters such as "the future and stability in the Mediterranean" and bilateral trade, which "is growing exponentially every year," he continued. “Last year, 2025, we tripled our exports compared to the previous year, which was already a year of significant growth,” which “represents our best export result since 2019,” he added. Furthermore, Algeria is, “of course, in the current context, a first-rate and reliable gas supplier, and we have, and this is most important, growing human and cultural ties, as evidenced by the presence of the Cervantes Institute in that country and the interest in our language,” he concluded. In April 2022, the decision by Pedro Sánchez's government to support the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco for Western Sahara allowed it to overcome a very serious diplomatic crisis with Rabat, but at the cost of another diplomatic crisis, equally or even more serious, with Algeria. That conflict with Algeria—Spain's main gas supplier, at a particularly delicate time due to the energy crisis stemming from Russia's war in Ukraine—led the government of Abdelmajid Tebboune to recall the previous ambassador to Spain for consultations in March 2022 and to suspend the bilateral Treaty of Friendship and trade relations. The thaw in bilateral relations came in 2023, following Sánchez's address to the UN General Assembly in which he advocated for finding a solution to the Western Sahara conflict "within the framework of the UN Charter and Security Council resolutions," without mentioning Morocco's proposal for autonomy, and thanks to Spain's support for the Palestinian state. Under these circumstances, Spain granted its approval to the new Algerian ambassador, Abdelfeta Daghmun, in November of that year. In February 2025, Albares held his first bilateral meeting with his Algerian counterpart, Ahmed Attaf, in Johannesburg (on the sidelines of the G20 Summit) since the outbreak of the crisis. The ministers met again in late September 2025 in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly High-Level Week, and on February 7 at the ministerial headquarters in the Palacio de Viana, Madrid. “We have strongly consolidated political relations of friendship. We are friends, partners, and neighbors. Algeria is our primary gas supplier, a reliable and consistent strategic partner,” Albares wrote that day on social media.

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