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Join on Telegram Washington DC – Spain has assumed its historic role on the Sahara question by unequivocally embracing Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as the only and best way out of the long-running conflict over the region. And in so doing, Madrid might have also paved the way for other European countries that have been concealing their reluctance to pick Morocco’s side behind vague, ambiguous statements of “positive neutrality.”
To Morocco, meanwhile, the Spanish government’s decision means the era of grandiloquent speeches unsupported by concrete actions is over. Having learned from the recent diplomatic crisis that has considerably damaged its once friendly and strategic relationship with Morocco, Spain appears determined to treat its southern neighbor with due respect, taking into account its interests and concerns.
Morocco: an assertive regional leader
Following the serious diplomatic rift that started between the two neighbors in April of last year, Rabat was adamant that the re-establishment of relations with Madrid could only be done on the basis of a more solid foundation of mutual respect, loyalty, and transparency.
This Moroccan position was clearly stated in King Mohammed VI’s speech commemorating the 46th anniversary of the Green March last November. Despite its willingness to turn the page with Madrid and other Western partners to embark on a new era of sincere and solid friendship, the King said, Morocco would not sign any strategic agreements with countries maintaining ambiguous or ambivalent positions on the Sahara issue.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez showed great courage and wisdom in sending the Moroccan King the letter that announced Spain’s historic adoption of a position that favors the Moroccan Autonomy Plan.
Unambiguously siding with Morocco was no small feat for the Spanish leader, given that significant sectors of Spain’s public opinion are strongly sympathetic to the Polisario Front’s narrative. And the virulence with which many Spanish commentators have since attacked their country’s support for Morocco’s Sahara stance gives some indication of the audacity it took Sanchez to break with Madrid’s historical ambivalence on the Sahara.
To a certain extent, the wisdom and lucidity of Sanchez’s decision should be seen as reflecting his country’s recognition, albeit belated, of the new geopolitical winds prevailing in the Mediterranean region. Morocco’s regional influence has prodigiously grown in recent years, with the North African country becoming a regional — African, to be more precise — power that now insists on reciprocity and mutual respect in relations with its Western allies.
This is particularly relevant to Moroccan-Spanish ties. And Sanchez’s letter to King Mohammed VI suggests that Madrid has finally resigned itself to the truth that maintaining good, solid relations with Morocco is key to preserving a large part of its economic and security interests.
Spain’s new, positive stance on Morocco’s Autonomy Plan is therefore a clear recognition of Morocco’s position as a harbor of stability and prosperity in the Maghreb. It also testifies to both Morocco’s growing leadership in the emerging African geopolitical landscape, and — most importantly — the growing international consensus in favor of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan.
To be sure, Spain’s new stance does not amount to an explicit recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara. But the novelty is that, for the first time, Madrid recognizes the importance of the Sahara for Morocco, as well as the need to “guarantee the stability, sovereignty, territory and prosperity of our countries.” As such, without explicitly endorsing the Moroccanness of the Sahara, Spain has subtly acknowledged Morocco’s sovereignty over the region.
Volte-face or logical evolution?
While it surely is a historic turning point, the Spanish government’s decision to support the Moroccan autonomy initiative does not exactly represent a radical departure from tradition.
Contrary to trendy suggestions in the Spanish media, Madrid’s stance is not a U-turn, but rather a logical evolution of its position in the direction Morocco required and expected from a strategic ally. With Spain bearing considerable historical responsibility in the conflict, the country’s new decision could also be interpreted as a sort of reckoning with history.
Hosting his Moroccan counterpart Abass El Fassi in December 2008, the former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero expressed moderate support for Morocco’s Autonomy Plan, praising Rabat’s “serious and credible” efforts to resolve the Sahara crisis. The then Spanish PM even added that the Moroccan initiative “constitutes a positive contribution” to the solution of the territorial conflict.
In this, Zapatero’s speech simply echoed the language used in UN Security Council resolutions since 2007, when Morocco presented its Autonomy Plan. Yet, although this Spanish position was not a clear endorsement of the Moroccan plan, it was welcomed in Rabat amidst a regional and international context that was back then far from being supportive of the Moroccan thesis.
Spain maintained a position of “positive neutrality” even during the two terms of former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (2011-18). But things started going awry for Spain in 2018, with Pedro Sanchez coming to power in 2018 in a geopolitical context that was increasingly favorable to Morocco.
Key in Spain’s decision to change some of its historical positions vis-a-vis Morocco was the sight of: Morocco reclaiming its leadership in Africa, becoming a key player in the Mediterranean region, and securing unprecedented international consensus around its Autonomy Plan. Madrid had to either embark on the new geopolitical boat of a boldly assertive Morocco or ignore reality and be swept away by overwhelmingly pro-Morocco diplomatic winds.
However, at the moment of truth, when Morocco’s position received a significant impetus with the American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, Spain failed to answer the call of history and chose instead to settle some scores with Morocco.
The Spanish government broke its positive neutrality commitment with declarations that smacked of some sort of fundamental hostility to Morocco’s Western Sahara stance. A striking illustration of this was the then Spanish foreign minister’s tirade against the US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara.
Faced with such dismissiveness from Spain, Morocco decided to postpone indefinitely the high-level Moroccan-Spanish meeting that was scheduled to be held in Rabat in December 2020. And things got out of hand between April and May 2021 after news emerged of Spain hosting the Polisario leader under a false identity.
While many in Rabat had long expressed their dissatisfaction with Spain’s duplicity on a number of highly sensitive and important issues for Morocco, Madrid’s decision to shelter Ghali and then shrug off Morocco’s complaints was a step too far.
For Morocco, it was clear that Sanchez’s government had broken a tacit agreement Rabat and Madrid signed in 2004. Under that agreement, Morocco was to shelve its territorial claims over Ceuta and Melilla and instead strengthen cooperation with Spain in the fight against illegal immigration. In return, Madrid agreed to commit to a position of positive neutrality on the Sahara issue.
Since then, although Spain’s official statements did not appear to support Morocco’s Sahara position, Spanish diplomats continued to endorse the Moroccan Autonomy Plan behind the scenes.
In hindsight, it now seems this Ghali-linked 18 months-long diplomatic crisis was a necessary evil. Spain’s newfound, unequivocal endorsement of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan is a step that Morocco had long been waiting — and hoping — for.
In exchange for Spain’s new position, Morocco is likely to commit to alleviating the severe economic crisis that the two enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have been witnessing since Rabat decided to close their borders more than two years ago.
That does not mean, of course, that Morocco will agree to open up to the smuggling spout from the two enclaves. Rather, in their new agreement, Morocco and Spain will be considering alternative solutions that can serve their respective interests, without Morocco questioning Spain’s legitimacy claims over the two enclaves.
For official on both sides, the important thing remains that restoring bilateral relations benefit the fight against illegal immigration and the delimitation of the maritime space of both countries off the Atlantic.
Spain’s concession
Four main reasons stand behind Spain’s positive shift on Morocco’s Autonomy Plan. Throughout the recent diplomatic crisis, Morocco’s firm resolution succeeded in showing Spain that its territorial integrity is non-negotiable.
Intractable and inflexible on the fundamentals of its Sahara position, Morocco signaled that it was ready to prolong the diplomatic crisis for as long as necessary until Spain was willing to treat Morocco as an equal partner.
Enraged by Spain’s “betrayal” and irreverent lack of reciprocity during the Brahim Ghali episode, Rabat made it clear that there could be no alliance or friendship with Spain so long as Spain continued to: violate the July 1990 cooperation and neighborliness treaty; shirk its historical responsibility in the Sahara conflict; and decline to recognize the Moroccan Autonomy Plan as the only viable solution to the Sahara question.
With its back to the wall after months of crisis, Spain started winking at Morocco in an effort to get it to soften its stance. One telling moment of Spain’s growing readiness to defuse tensions was Pedro Sanchez’s reshuffling of his cabinet by notably removing the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha Sanchez Laya.
And with the appointment of Jose Manuel Albarez as the chief of Spanish diplomacy, Madrid’s discourse on Morocco shifted drastically. Visibly keen to organize a meeting with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, Albarez spoke repeatedly in favorable, laudatory terms of Spain’s “essential” and “indispensable” cooperation with Morocco.
But Rabat ignored Madrid’s charm offensive, suggesting there would be no restoration of “strategic alliance” or “traditional partnership” as long as Spain was not prepared to end its “duplicity” and support Morocco’s territorial integrity.
The second factor in Spain’s U-turn is the recent change in Germany’s position on the Sahara. Germany’s decision to support the Moroccan Autonomy Plan caught the Spanish government off guard, especially since Berlin had long been at the forefront of European countries that opposed any agreements between the EU and Morocco that included the Sahara.
In their coverage of Germany’s decision, several Spanish media outlets said the move showed the Spanish government that if it wanted to re-establish relations with Morocco on a solid basis, it should simply follow the Germans’ lead.
The third factor — and perhaps the most important — is Algerian gas. Gas is the cornerstone of the relationship between Spain and Algeria. It was central to the agreements that the Spanish government and its Algerian counterpart brokered between 1972 and 1975 to prevent Morocco from recovering the Sahara.
In the wake of the July 1972 tripartite summit in Agadir, through which the late King Hassan II sought to establish a common position with Algeria and Mauritania in order to force Spain to cede the Sahara back to Morocco, the then head of Spanish diplomacy, Lopez Bravo, rushed to visit Algiers and Nouakchott to thwart Morocco’s strategy.
Bravo and his Algerian counterpart, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, notably signed a trade agreement worth $500 million during the Spanish minister’s visit to Algiers — under which Spain committed to buying Algerian gas. Algeria has since employed gas to pressure Madrid into taking a position of equidistance between Rabat and Algiers.
The Algerian game has grown in scale and effectiveness over the years, especially since Algeria has been the leading supplier of natural gas to the Spanish economy for five decades. Until last year, 45 % of Spain’s gas needs came from Algeria, a large part of which was supplied through the Europe-Maghreb gas pipeline, whose contract Algeria recently decided to terminate.
That decision to not renew the agreement on the gas pipeline linking Algeria, Spain, and Portugal via Morocco has turned all strategic calculations upside down. Although intended to hurt or “punish” Morocco’s gas market, the Algerian decision has proved to be a geopolitical boon for Rabat.
Notably, the decision has caused serious damage to the Spanish economy, sending shock waves through the Spanish political establishment. For many in Madrid, the main takeaway has been that Algeria is not a country on which Spain should rely to meet its energy needs.
Spain has therefore turned to other markets to replace Algerian gas. In particular, the US market has become, for the first time since last February, the primary source of supply for the Spanish market. The US now accounts for 39% of Spain’s gas imports, far ahead of Algeria’s 23% since the closure of the Maghreb pipeline.
With the Algerian gas set to decline in importance for the Spanish economy, Spain will eventually free itself from Algerian pressure and will be able to manage its relations with Morocco without the usual, Algeria-linked political calculation. That is the reason Madrid decided to endorse Morocco’s Autonomy Plan.
But many in the Spanish have appeared to fear that Algiers would retaliate against Madrid and cut off gas supplies. These reports missed one critical point, however: Gas contracts are long-term deals and no state can unilaterally break them.
Whatever Algeria chooses to do next following its furious response to Spain’s endorsement of Morocco’s autonomy proposal, the country will have no choice but to honor its gas contract with Spain until 2030. Again, the inter-state regulations governing the gas business are not the same as those of the oil trade.
Had an oil deal been the primary driver of Spain-Algeria relations, then yes, Algeria would have had the option of suspending its supplies to Spain, since oil contracts are generally short-term. This is an extremely important fact that must be taken into account when analyzing the reasons that led the Sanchez government to position itself in favor of Morocco, regardless of Algeria’s protestations.
Indeed, Sanchez knows that Algeria, which also needs money, will not be able to terminate the gas contract binding it to Spain. And should Algeria decide to somehow terminate the contract, it would be in blatant violation of the international law that governs such deals. Most significantly, such a move would expose Algiers to the wrath of both Europe and the United States, especially in an international context marked by the war in Ukraine.
Why would the USA care that much about a gas deal between Algiers and Madrid? An American company, Blackrock, shares 49% of the Medgaz pipeline with Naturgy, Spain’s national gas company; the remaining 51% of the Medgaz deal is held by Algeria’s Sonatrach.
In addition to these three factors, the war in Ukraine and the geopolitical, political and security upheavals that it is likely to bring about in the short, medium and long terms have also played a role in Spain’s shifting of its Western Sahara position in favor of Morocco’s autonomy initiative.
With Europe watching the situation in Ukraine with apprehension, many in Spain fear that a prolongation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict will lead to unprecedented refugee flows and put the country in an overwhelming migration crisis.
As it expects a substantial number of refugees fleeing Ukraine, Spain needs to secure its southern border by ensuring the cooperation of its southern neighbor, Morocco. Madrid’s goal and hope, then, is to get Rabat to help stem the flow of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, which has been devastated by the effects of the COVID crisis, notably food insecurity and political instability.
What about France?
On a broader geostrategic front, Spain’s clear support for Morocco’s Autonomy Plan is sure to pile up pressure on France. It is true that since Morocco presented its Autonomy Plan to the Security Council in 2007, France has been at the forefront of the countries that have supported it.
Yet this support has never gone beyond an almost mechanical repetition of the language used in the UN Security Council resolutions — applauding Morocco’s plan and describing it as a “serious and credible” basis for resolving the Sahara conflict.
Even with the US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara having consecrated Morocco’s thesis and made a pro-Morocco shift less risky, France has continued to embrace the Moroccan plan as only “a serious and credible basis” to solve the Sahara conflict. But, as I said in a previous analysis, there is, especially in diplomatic language, an abysmal semantic and political difference between the use of a definite and indefinite article.
In saying that the autonomy plan is “the most serious, credible and realistic” option, Spain is ruling out any other options. This contrasts starkly with France’s language, which continues to leave the room open to other alternativer or interpretations.
Like Spain — and more than any other Western or European country — France bears a major responsibility in the origins of the Sahara conflict. Spain would never have occupied the Sahara in the first place without both the Franco-British agreement of April 1904 and the secret agreement that Paris signed with Madrid in October of the same year.
If Spain had not received military assistance from France and its campaign of “pacification of Morocco” (which was in fact a campaign of terror against Moroccan resistance forces) until 1934, it would never have been able to effectively occupy the territory in southern Morocco.
Faced with the latest developments in the Sahara issue — the UN and African consensus on the need for compromise and realism, the US recognition of the Moroccanness of the Sahara, and now the German and Spanish declarations in favor of the Moroccan position — it is now up to France to make the choice that is so obviously necessary.
Such a decision will serve not only to repair one of the most cruel injustices that Western colonial conquest has inflicted on Morocco, but it will also and above demonstrate to Morocco and the Moroccan people the sincerity of the French position on the Sahara.
Moroccan diplomacy, meanwhile, should make sure to implement the central thesis of King Mohammed VI’s speech during the 46th anniversary of the Green March: That Morocco will sign no strategic partnership deals with countries that maintain ambiguous or ambivalent, or even subtly hostile positions on Morocco’s Western Sahara stance.
Samir Bennis is the co-founder of Morocco World News. You can follow him on Twitter @SamirBennis.
