The Diplomat
Some 2,000 people, according to the Government Delegation, demonstrated yesterday in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid in the Plaza de la Provincia, against the turnaround of the Government’s on Western Sahara.
“Sánchez, pay attention, the Sahara is not for sale”, was one of the slogans of the demonstration called by the State Coordination of Associations in Solidarity with the Sahara (CEAS-Sahara) under the slogan ‘Not in my name’.
Those present carried flags of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and placards on which they could read demands such as ‘Free Sahara now’, ‘No more betrayal of the Saharawi people’ or ‘Right to self-determination for the Saharawi people’.
Among the participants were prominent leaders of Unidas Podemos and Más Madrid, who have already expressed their opposition to the U-turn on the Sahara by the executive of which they form part.
Despite this opposition, yesterday the spokesman for Unidas Podemos in the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee, Gerardo Pisarello, said on the programme ‘Parlamento’ on Radio Nacional de España that his coalition will wait to hear the explanations given next Wednesday by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in the plenary session of the Lower House, before deciding whether to register its own initiative in Congress on the dispute.
Pisarello said that Unidas Podemos has yet to receive any explanation in private about the Government’s turnaround in endorsing Morocco’s proposal for autonomy for the former Spanish colony.
Yesterday’s demonstration was attended, among others, by Izquierda Unida-Unidas Podemos MEPs Sira Rego and Manu Pineda; Podemos spokesperson Isa Serra and Podemos co-spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly Alejandra Jacinto. Also taking part were the spokesperson for Más Madrid in the Assembly, Mónica García, and Podemos co-founder Juan Carlos Monedero, among others.
“It is unacceptable and unjustifiable,” Serra told Europa Press, recalling that Spanish society has a “commitment” to the Sahrawi people. “It is very serious to stand in front of those who violate human rights, against the sentences of the European Union Court and against the UN resolutions, defending the law of the strongest”, she lamented.
For her part, Sira Rego described as “inopportune” the declarations of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on his position on the Sahara, and called on him and the PSOE to act in compliance with the UN resolutions.
“The distressing situation of the Saharawi people should have been resolved a long time ago”, he said, stressing that the IU will always show its “solidarity” and demand that the Saharawi people’s demands for their right to “self-determination” be fulfilled.
In its call, the CEAS-Sahara expressed its “astonishment” at “the exchange of communiqués between the governments of Spain and Morocco” in which, it regrets, the Spanish executive “considers the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco for Western Sahara as the only credible solution to the conflict that Spain generated after an inconclusive process of decolonisation”.
In this respect, he questioned the argument by which the Spanish government positions itself “on the side of the Moroccan occupier”, as if “it were unaware of its historical, legal and political responsibility in the question of Western Sahara”. The just solution to this conflict, he added, is the one chosen by the Saharawi people on the basis of international law and through the holding of a referendum of self-determination.
He called on the political groups to “redouble their efforts” to enforce international law and to “forcefully” reject this decision by the government, because they consider that this new stage with Morocco breaks with the “consensus” that has “characterised” Spanish foreign policy on the Sahara for the last 46 years.
