The ostrich strategy
Since Fernández-Ordoñez, Spain has yet to have a foreign minister equal to a new geopolitical order that has yet to establish itself due to unfinished conflicts and the volatility of international relations. A country's foreign policy is usually a state policy, presided over by firmness and clarity, above partisan interests.
Spain's foreign policy towards Morocco, and with respect to the Sahara, has been lurching like a tightrope walker, due to its complexity. Spain clings immovably to the UN, while pretending to maintain a relationship of goodwill with Morocco through gestures towards Algeria and the Polisario. An inequality, whose terms are unequal, which inevitably leads to misunderstandings.
Why would Sánchez welcome an uncomfortable guest with a false identity? It was a stab in the back for Morocco, an important partner in the Strait of Gibraltar, in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coast, which Minister González Laya calls a 'friend' and a 'privileged partner'.
Spain is aware of the Kingdom of Morocco's sensitivity to the issue of the Southern Provinces. And Morocco expects Spain to take steps forward, in line with reality, not backwards. The hospitalisation and the more than suspicious false identity in which the Polisario leader is said to have entered the country and the reason why Spain played this game in collusion with Algeria is striking.
If he has done so to prevent the Polisario leader from sitting before the judge of the National Court, José de la Mata, for crimes against humanity allegedly committed against the Sahrawi population of Tindouf (Algeria), Sánchez would have to join him, along with Marlaska and González Laya, charged with prevarication and abuse of power.
If it is to give a left-wing blow to the electoral campaign in order to win votes from Podemos in the battle for Madrid on May 4, where Ayuso's PP and the far-right Vox are ahead in the polls, we could be talking about a reckless president. Whenever Pedro Sánchez enters the election campaign, it is notorious that he veers to the left with impetus. And the rest of the year he devotes to Calviño's neoliberal policies in a tug-of-war with Iglesias' Podemos.
If he has done so for humanitarian reasons, why did he allow him to enter the country irregularly and why, precisely, in Logroño?
In any case, the Moroccan authorities deplore this attitude, which they consider "disloyal" and "unbecoming of partners". Spain cannot imitate Germany. The interests of one and the other are diametrically different, both in terms of history and geography. This decision by the Spanish government has revealed a free exercise in non-transparency and immaturity on the part of foreign minister González Laya. There were many possibilities to act without disturbing.
At the European level, Spain is equally hiding behind the EU's foreign policy, and to make matters worse, its current head is a flawed Borrell, who is blundering around. Spanish foreign diplomacy is like the domestic policy of former president Rajoy, who used the tactic of the ostrich. González Laya has ignored the preferential partner he claims to have in North Africa by playing down the issue without explaining why the true identity of Polisario chief Brahim Ghali was concealed by Mohamed Benbatouche.
This attitude has raised many questions in the Alawite country and put it back to square one. And once again, trust - shattered over time by a series of misunderstandings - has to be mended. Should a new one be bought?