Eduardo González
Exactly one year ago, the Spanish government made a sharp turnaround in its traditional position on Western Sahara with its decision to endorse Morocco’s autonomy plan “as the most serious, credible and realistic basis for the resolution of this dispute”.
That “historic turn”, which has been rejected by all the rest of the parliamentary arc, including the government partners, made it possible to overcome a very serious diplomatic crisis with Rabat at the price of starting another one with Algeria, the main gas supplier to Spain. It also resulted in a growing, and criticized, complicity of Spain with Morocco in human rights matters and in a road map that has contributed to improve trade, to reduce irregular immigration and to start the opening, for the moment unfinished, of the land customs with Ceuta and Melilla.
“Spain considers the Moroccan proposal of autonomy for the Sahara presented in 2007 as the most serious, credible and realistic basis for the resolution of this dispute”, declared the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in the letter to Mohamed VI, sent on March 14, 2022 and which could only be known publicly a few days later through the Moroccan media. That decision, which radically modified Spain’s position with regard to its former colony, led to the holding, on April 7, of a meeting in Rabat between the head of the Executive and the Moroccan King in which the road map that would mark the new stage of bilateral relations was adopted.
Since then, in addition to the various meetings of the working groups established by the road map (for example, the delimitation of territorial waters on the Atlantic coast, a particularly important issue for the Canary Islands and on which there are still no conclusive results) and the numerous personal meetings of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, the high point came in early February in Rabat with the holding of the twelfth High Level Meeting (RAN) between Spain and Morocco, the first since 2015.
The RAN and customs
The meeting in Rabat, which began with controversy due to Mohamed VI’s stand-off of Pedro Sánchez, concluded with a Joint Declaration in which both parties expressed their desire to “enrich” the “relations of excellence that have always united them”, reiterated their “commitment to human rights” and pledged to “promote trade and investment”. On Western Sahara, Spain reiterated its position in favor of the Moroccan autonomy plan. In addition, Pedro Sanchez assured the plenary of the RAN that the two countries had reached a “commitment to mutual respect” whereby both in their discourse and in their political practice they will “avoid everything that we know offends the other party, especially in what affects our respective spheres of sovereignty”. These words obviously alluded, without mentioning them, to the Moroccan claims on Ceuta and Melilla and to the situation of Western Sahara.
The RAN was attended by the Socialist members of the Government and with the absence of the ministers of Unidas Podemos, a minority partner in the coalition Government, which has repeatedly criticized Pedro Sanchez’s decision to recognize the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara.
As Albares explained in Congress at the end of February (therefore, several weeks after the RAN), the new stage of relations with Rabat has resulted in numerous “concrete results”, such as the dismantling of criminal and terrorist networks, the installation of more than a thousand Spanish SMEs in Morocco, the increase in trade, the creation of the bases for Spanish companies to access Morocco’s investment plan, a considerable decrease in irregular immigration (69% in Andalusia and 82% in the Canary Islands compared to 2022), an increase in cultural cooperation and the beginning of the opening of land borders and customs in Ceuta (which until now did not exist) and Melilla (closed since 2018).
Regarding this point, to date only two commercial expedition pilot tests have been carried out, one on January 27, days before the RAN, and another on February 24, to detect and try to solve the problems, but there are still no concrete dates, which has generated some concern in the two autonomous cities and the approval, last week, of a resolution in the Senate – proposed by the PP and rejected by the PSOE – to make public the timetable for opening.
Parliamentary rejection, Algeria and Human Rights
In any case, and apart from the greater or lesser progress in the relations with Morocco, the hard turn has not come for free to the Government, which has not only faced the unanimous rejection of all the parliamentary groups (including Unidas Podemos), but has also contributed to seriously deteriorate the relations with Algeria, the main gas supplier to Spain, at a particularly delicate moment due to the energy crisis derived from the Russian war in Ukraine.
Apart from this, the Government has increased the uneasiness due to what seems to be an excessive complacency towards Morocco in all forums, both national and international. A few days before the celebration of the RAN, the Spanish Socialist MEPs voted in the European Parliament against a resolution critical of the human rights situation in Morocco, in the name of “responsibility and in favor of frank bilateral relations based on dialogue and understanding”.
Likewise, several parties of the parliamentary arc, from PP to EH Bildu, have been interested in the Spanish Parliament or in the European Parliament in the “judicial harassment” of Morocco to Ignacio Cembrero, the journalist of El Confidencial who reported on the involvement of Rabat in the spying on the cell phones of several Spanish leaders (among them, Pedro Sanchez, the Minister of Agriculture and former ambassador in Rabat, Luis Planas; the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya; and the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles), and even to her own personal cell phone, through Pegasus, a “hot potato” that the Spanish Government has also done everything possible to get rid of in order not to anger Rabat.
To complicate matters further, PSOE deputies voted on 14 February last in Congress against a bill to grant Spanish nationality to Saharawis born before Spain’s withdrawal in 1976 and to their descendants.
