The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, assured yesterday before the plenary session of the Congress that the current diplomatic crisis with Morocco arose “from an act without political connotations, which we neither seek nor want to feed”, and asked for the “loyalty” of the PP to be able to get out of this situation “as soon as possible”.
The Government is aware of the “rejection” generated in Morocco by the decision to welcome the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghalim, for his hospitalization in Logroño for COVID-19, said the minister in response to an interpellation of the PP Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, Valentina Martínez Ferro, “on the state of our foreign policy”.
According to the minister, this is a crisis that arose from “an act without political connotations, which we neither seek nor want to fuel and which we want to put an end to as soon as possible”. For this reason, and to overcome this situation, González Laya asked the PP for “the same loyalty” shown by the PSOE from the opposition every time diplomatic crises arose during the previous PP government. “Spain’s interests are at stake”, she warned.
The Government is “fully open to dialogue and to look to the future” because “Morocco is a partner and friend of Spain and we want it to remain so”, added González Laya, who warned of “how much we can both gain by cooperating and how much we can lose if we don’t”. “Morocco’s progress is our progress because it redounds to our security”, she added.
“Cooperation and respect, including borders, is an indispensable pillar on which to build the Spanish-Moroccan relationship”, she continued. “We offer respect, but we equally ask for respect from our partners”, added González Laya, who recalled that the southern border is also a European border and that the avalanche of migrants in Ceuta provoked by Morocco in retaliation for Ghali’s entry has also caused “consternation and rejection” in the EU.
Valentina Martínez
During her intervention, Valentina Martínez admitted that the decision to attend to a sick person for humanitarian reasons is “morally laudable, understandable and defensible”, but warned that it should have been done with transparency, after informing Morocco, obtaining the support of the PP and asking for the advice of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) and the Foreign Policy Council. Therefore, the PP MP demanded the minister to “render accounts in the most transparent way possible” on who ordered Ghali’s entry into Spain “with false documentation, without informing Morocco and behind the back of the Judiciary” and on “the plan she has foreseen” for his departure from Spain and if it will be carried out “behind the back of Justice”.
Likewise, Valentina Martínez warned that the current diplomatic conflict between Morocco and Spain was “manifestly avoidable” and is the result of a foreign policy “that does not deserve this name” and that has been “aggravated by a succession of rebuffs that have increased Morocco’s distrust towards Spain”, such as the decision of Pedro Sánchez to break the tradition of dedicating the first presidential trip to Morocco, the support to the referendum of self-determination in the Sahara by some members of the Government or the entry of the leader of the Polisario without previously informing Morocco, unlike what had been done in the “other six times that Ghali has traveled to Spain since they have been at the head of the Government”.
In any case, Martinez Ferro admitted that these errors “do not justify the disproportionate and inhuman reaction” of Morocco in Ceuta and reiterated the support of her party to the Government for “the defense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Spain.
