Albares asserts that “no country in the world” has commented on the deaths of three Polisario members

Eduardo González Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares stated this Wednesday before the full Congress that the Government has not commented on the recent deaths of three members of the Polisario Front during a Moroccan attack because “no country in the world, nor the United Nations, nor the European Union” have done so. Albares appeared this Wednesday in the parliamentary session for government oversight to answer a question from MP Francesc-Marc Álvaro Vidal, of the Republican Parliamentary Group, regarding Spain's position on the deaths of three members of the Polisario Front, including Lehbib Mohamed Abdelaziz, son of former president Mohamed Abdelaziz. The drone attack was carried out on June 7 by the Moroccan Armed Forces and coincided with a visit by the UN Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria. "Your government has not condemned this attack," Álvaro Vidal pointed out. "The Spanish Embassy, however, did condemn an attack carried out by the Polisario Front on May 5 in Esmara," he added, referring to the impact of three projectiles on the outskirts of the city of Esmara, located in the northern part of Western Sahara, an attack claimed by the Sahrawi People's Liberation Army and which caused no fatalities. “What is your cabinet’s position on this targeted assassination, which, had Israel, for example, carried out against a Palestinian leader or Russia against a Ukrainian leader, you would have condemned immediately?” the ERC parliamentarian asked. Albares “You say Spain hasn’t spoken out,” the minister continued, referring to the deaths of the three Polisario Front members. “As far as I know, no country in the world has spoken out, neither the United Nations nor the European Union,” he asserted. However, he added, the statement regarding the attack in Esmara “is exactly the same as the one issued by the United Nations, the European Union, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, to name a few.” “Minister: the silence of many is the consolation of cynics or subjects of the corrupt Moroccan monarch,” the ERC MP later retorted. “There has been a conflict surrounding the Sahara for over 50 years, and I, for one, will never resign myself to another 50 years of this frozen conflict,” Albares insisted in his remarks. “In this conflict, three things must be done,” he continued. On the one hand, we must do "what Spain does: support the parties so that they reach a political solution, as we have supported them now The second thing that must be done, he affirmed, is “to support the Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, who is the one who has to put a solution on the table.” “I inform you that on June 8, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, traveled on a Spanish Air Force plane precisely to the Tindouf camps to continue making progress,” he specified. Thirdly, he added, it is necessary “to support the UN Security Council,” whose latest resolution (2797/2026) “endorses Spain’s position and states that this is the path that must be followed.” “At the same time, we must maintain the best possible relationship with all our neighbors, with France, with Portugal, even though the People’s Party is at odds with all of them, and also with Morocco, because with Morocco we have vital interests at stake, and we can only move forward together,” he added. Following the deaths of the three Polisario Front members, Sumar (a minority member of the coalition government) denounced Morocco's "violations of the ceasefire," which he said disregarded UN Security Council Resolution 2797/2026, and demanded that Morocco's ambassador, Karima Benyaich, be summoned to explain these events. For his part, the Polisario Front's representative in Spain, Abdulah Arabi, criticized the "double standards" of Spanish foreign policy, which "only questions, investigates, and condemns events when they are perpetrated by one of the parties," while "when the victims are Sahrawis, the silence becomes deafening." Airspace Furthermore, Álvaro Vidal warned Albares during his intervention that “Spain controls most of the airspace over Western Sahara.” “When Moroccan drones attack in that territory, it happens in airspace controlled from Gran Canaria Airport,” he specified. “Don’t you have anything to say about that? It’s the airspace you control,” he asked. “It’s a disgrace, it’s a scandal, which indicates a double standard that is unacceptable.” Since 1976, Spain has managed the airspace over Western Sahara (as a “non-self-governing territory pending decolonization,” according to the UN) through ENAIRE, the public business entity that manages air traffic in Spain, and by mandate of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The airspace over Western Sahara is controlled from the Canary Islands, and therefore, Spain is responsible for authorizing flights arriving in the territory. However, the territory's airports are controlled by Morocco, which has militarily occupied the former Spanish colony since 1975. As a result, Morocco already effectively controls between 15% and 20% of the airspace over Western Sahara, where it has established no-fly zones for military exercises. In December 2024, José Manuel Albares assured the full Congress that Spain had no intention of ceding its airspace over Western Sahara to Morocco, and in June 2025, the Congress's Foreign Affairs Committee urged the Government (at the proposal of the People's Party, PP) to guarantee Spanish management of Western Sahara's airspace through ENAIRE.

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