Laayoune – A video is going viral of a Moroccan-Spanish rapper apologizing for raising the Polisario flag during a concert in Spain, sparking controversy in the Spanish media.
The artist, Morad El-Khattouti, made a surprising statement during a live stream on the video platform TikTok, saying that he had mistaken the Polisario flag for Palestine’s.
The Moroccan-Spanish singer claimed that a fan threw him the flag on stage while giving a performance in the northwestern Spanish city of Ourense three months ago. El-Khattouti said he raised the flag in the heat of the moment, carrying it throughout the performance, as he believed it to be the flag of Palestine.
“It was a confusion,” El-Khattouti argued in the video, adding that “everyone knows that every time I carry the Moroccan flag in Spain, I am not ashamed of it.”
Asking for forgiveness from his Moroccan fans, El-Khattouti apologized for the mishap and denounced his act of raising the Polisario Front’s flag.
Some fans have been receptive to the rapper’s apology, noting that those who are not sufficiently familiar with Polisario’s flag can easily mistake it for Palestine’s as the two flags have similar details.
In terms of design, both flags have the same primary tricolor palette of black, white, and green horizontal stripes (from top to bottom), overlaid by a red triangle emerging from the left side. The notable difference between the two is that the Polisario flag contains a red crescent and a star in the middle white stripe.
Read also: Spain Officially Endorses Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara
This controversy comes just six months after Spain announced its support for Morocco’s stance on the Western Sahara dispute.
In a letter to King Mohammed VI on March 18, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez notified the Moroccan monarch of his country’s endorsement of Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as a “serious and credible basis” to end the decades-long dispute over Western Sahara.
