Moroccan Ambassador to Spain will Return to Madrid This Week

Dubai – Moroccan ambassador to Spain Karima Benyaich is set to return to Madrid in the coming week.

Following the Morocco-Spain diplomatic rift that escalated tensions throughout most of 2021, both countries are showing signs of renewed trust and cooperation. On May 20, Benyaich was recalled from Spain to Rabat, with Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita stressing that she “will not return to Madrid as long as the crisis lasts, and the crisis will last as long as its real cause continues.”

The Morocco-Spain diplomatic rift has been linked to a number of lingering strategic divergences between the two neighbors, but the most notable factor was Spain’s decision to receive the Polisario Front’s leader Brahim Ghali into Spanish territory for hospitalization.

Despite high tensions and accusatory statements from both sides, there is a growing sense that relations between the two countries are improving.

According to the Spanish outlet La Provincias, all signs suggest that Benyaich will return to her post in Madrid later this week. Upon the ambassador’s return to Madrid, her first assignment will be the organization and execution of a high-level meeting between Morocco and Spain.

The meeting was originally scheduled for December 2020, but had been postponed due to the resurgence of COVID-19, and once again in February 2021, but never materialized again for a variety of reasons.

Despite the “unprecedented crisis” between the two countries, Moroccan diplomats have been working in a “composed, clear and responsible way” to resolve the conflict, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI said on August 20.

During his annual address to mark Revolution Day, the Moroccan monarch explained that he was personally following the diplomatic dialogue between the two countries and that he hoped to “not merely to overcome this crisis, but to turn the situation into an opportunity.”

Now that dialogue appears to have resumed between Madrid and Rabat, the two countries can resume discussions about their common social, political, and economic interests. Spain and Morocco have historically worked together in a variety of sectors, primarily, in irregular migration, economic cooperation, as well as on renewable energies and environmental challenges in general.

Moving onward, King Mohammed expressed a “feeling of optimism” in building cooperation and strengthening diplomatic ties with the government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – a welcome relief following the diplomatic crisis that seemed interminable.