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As the Spanish government strives to restore relations with Morocco, Spain’s right-wing parties are expressing irritation at the government’s change of tone over Morocco’s fish farm in the Chafarinas Islands.
The Morocco-run fish farm has sparked a wave of loud nationalistic protestations from the PP and the far-right VOX party, with both political parties urging the Cabinet of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to firmly react to supposed Moroccan provocations.
Fernando Gutierrez Diaz de Otazu, the Melilla representative of the conservative and Christian People’s Party (PP), urged the Spanish government on January 2 to open a file for the demolition of the Moroccan fish farm installed near the Chafarinas Islands, according to the Spanish outlet Cope.
Speaking at a press conference, De Otazu claimed that the Morocco-run fish farm is “in Spanish waters.”
The Melilla MP’s reaction follows a second response on the matter from Pedro Sanchez’s office. Spain’s “government has carried out the necessary actions [with Morocco] to ensure compliance with the applicable regulations,” Sanchez’s office had said earlier when faced with criticism over its apparently tepid tone in dealing with the territorial crisis with Morocco.
It also clarified that Spanish diplomacy has strengthened “actions with communication with Morocco through the usual procedure, namely diplomatic channels.”
But the Spanish government’s more conciliatory approach to Morocco did not sit well with the PP representative in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, who suggested during his press conference that Sanchez and his government “should take another step and act.”
The demolition of the fish farm is “not contradictory with good relations and neighborliness with Morocco,” Otazu added, according to Cope.
Read also: Morocco-Spain Diplomatic Honeymoon Faces Rough Test Amid Territorial Disputes
For the PP, he commented, Spain’s reaction to Morocco’s fish farm in the Chafarinas Island should be similar to “any part of [Spain’s] national territory when a construction is carried out without the corresponding permits.”
He further stressed that his reaction constitutes a principled denunciation of the Sanchez government’s reluctance to defend Spain’s national sovereignty in its territorial waters.
“Any infrastructure action in Spanish territory or in Spanish territorial waters, which does not have the authorization of the Spanish authorities, must be subject” to demolition, he said.
