Eduardo González
The Government reacted yesterday in different ways to the insults of the official Algerian press agency APS against the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, whom this past Tuesday it labeled as a “pyromaniac” for having implied that Russia is behind the latest measures adopted by Algeria in its relationship with Spain.
On the one hand, Foreign Ministry sources assured The Diplomat yesterday that Minister Albares “never” made a single public statement linking Algeria’s latest decisions to Russia’s alleged influence. The only member of the Government who had done so was the First Vice-President of the Government and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, who last Monday told Catalunya Radio that she was not surprised by the Algerian Government’s attitude towards Spain because the Maghreb country is “aligned with Russia”. Calviño herself declared yesterday to the press that Spain’s interest “as a country is to have the best relations, excellent relations with our neighbors, and very particularly with Morocco and Algeria”.
The main aggrieved by APS’s outbursts, José Manuel Albares himself, declared yesterday during his official trip to New Delhi that Spain’s objective is “to have the best possible relationship” and to resolve differences “through dialogue and diplomacy”. “The Spanish people are a friendly people to the Algerian people and what we want is for that friendship to prevail,” he continued, speaking to Efe news agency. “Of course what they have to see clearly is that there will always be a firm defense on my part and on the part of the Government of Spain of Spanish companies, of Spaniards and of the interests of Spain,” he warned.
On the other hand, the Minister of Agriculture (and former Spanish ambassador to Morocco), Luis Planas, yesterday returned to the charge of the possible links between Algeria and Russia. In statements reported by the Efe news agency, Planas assured that the Algerian government is receiving “pressures from other countries” that are affecting its relations with Spain. According to the minister, the recent visits to Algeria by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, “mean something”, especially “in the context of the historic Summit” of NATO, to be held in Madrid at the end of June. “The war in Ukraine is influencing many things in the world, many more than we think,” he warned.
In any case, the minister expressed his wish that “common sense prevails” and that Spain and Algeria return to having “a constructive and positive relationship” because “a good relationship with Morocco does not at all have to mean a bad relationship with Algeria.” Likewise, Planas declared that the dismissal of the Algerian Minister of Finance, Abderramán Raouya, responsible for the order to freeze trade with Spain, “could perhaps be interpreted as a change of orientation, which would be positive”.
The third vice-president of the Government and Minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, was particularly harsh on the statements of the Algerian state press agency against Albares. “It is unacceptable for any media to introduce and pour that kind of comments against anyone, and much less against a foreign minister of the government of a neighboring country with which there has been a very intense relationship for decades and with which we have to normalize the relationship as soon as possible,” she told Tele Cinco.
Last week, Algeria suspended the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness and Cooperation and trade relations with Spain in retaliation for its change of position on Western Sahara, after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez showed his support last March for Morocco’s autonomy proposal for the former Spanish colony. Two days later, the European Union warned Algeria that suspending trade relations with an EU member could violate the Brussels-Algeria Association Agreement, after which the Algerian mission to the EU assured that it had never considered freezing trade or gas supplies with Spain.
