Mr President Pedro Sánchez: open your eyes to the anti-Moroccan manoeuvres of your government partners
In writing about Spanish-Moroccan relations, I cannot overlook the role played by the media, because they can contribute as much to improving mutual understanding, overcoming prejudices and healthy and enriching debate as they can to stirring up trouble and manipulating public opinion with subjectivism, exaggerations and lies.
This preamble allows me to congratulate some Spanish media, such as the magazine Atalayar among others, which, with great professionalism, contribute to confidence-building and enriching mutual knowledge by informing and guiding thousands of readers on the most important developments in international relations, and in particular on what is happening in the Western Mediterranean region and North Africa, specifically with regard to my country, the Kingdom of Morocco.
This is important because the vast majority of my Spanish-speaking fellow citizens follow with extreme attention the very positive developments in relations between our two countries. The recent trip to Morocco by the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, to which I will refer later, is an example of this. For all of us of my generation who, as fate would have it, came into the world on Moroccan soil, then under Spanish Protectorate, and who took our first steps in learning the language of Cervantes in Spanish schools throughout northern Morocco, from Tangiers to Al Hoceima and from Alcazarquivir to Tetouan, every advance and progress in relations between Morocco and Spain is something we feel as our own and we rejoice, as do the Moroccan people as a whole.
For this reason we were comforted when the Spanish President Pedro Sánchez sent a letter on 14 March 2022 to our King, His Majesty Mohammed VI, recognising that the proposal for autonomy for the Sahara formulated by the Sovereign on 11 April 2007, more than 16 years ago, is "the most serious, realistic and credible basis for the resolution of this dispute", which in our opinion is artificial, anti-historical and goes against the harmony, peace and progress of the Maghreb and its peoples. Since then, a year and a half ago now, we have witnessed a formidable acceleration of progress in bilateral Spanish-Moroccan relations in all areas. I bear witness to this.
However, in recent times we have seen the appearance of some dark clouds that have caused concern in Moroccan public opinion and among all those of us who believe that Spanish-Moroccan relations should not be hindered either by populist and (or) outdated political actors or by third countries envious of their scope and exemplarity.
We are very concerned that the political movement SUMAR, which has signed a new agreement to form a coalition government with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and which has enabled the necessary votes in the Congress of Deputies to achieve the investiture of Mr. Pedro Sánchez, has signed a pact with the separatist movement Polisario Front, to defend in all areas the so-called "Saharawi cause" in this new Legislature (See Endnote).
This pact, between SUMAR and the Polisario, is only "informal" because no Spanish state body can admit it to registration, and which we in Morocco consider unnatural; and which comes at a time when all the evidence gathered by the United Nations force, MINURSO, and by the Moroccan authorities, points to the responsibility of this separatist movement in the terrorist attacks carried out in the town of Smara in the southern Moroccan provinces, against civilian targets, which left one dead and several seriously wounded.
We are therefore concerned that the SUMAR movement is developing an anti-Moroccan plan that can be considered as a kind of blackmail to the Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, calling into question the stability of the new Legislature. In whose name has the new Vice-President of the Executive, Yolanda Díaz, made this agreement with the armed separatist movement that aims to break the unity of the country and undermine its sovereignty? Has she done it in the name of her party, or in her own name? Either way it is a challenge to the Spanish president. It is true that any Spanish political party can defend its positions as long as it respects the Spanish Constitution and does not question the unity of the country and its sovereignty. The law allows them to do so. But the parties that form the coalition government are obliged to abide by and defend the decisions of the Executive. SUMAR does not do so and de facto questions the authority and prerogatives of the president.
This movement, which pretends to "add", put on its list of candidates for Congress a Spanish citizen, Teslem Andala Ubbi, known as Tesh Sidi, insinuating that she is a Polisario militant, when in fact she was a Saharawi born in the Algerian camps of Tindouf and her family sent her with her grandfather to Mauritania where she entered primary school. Of course we do not question the right of Ms. Yolanda Díaz to put on her electoral lists any Spanish citizen she wants, but it should be known that Teslem Andala Ubbi came to Spain as an immigrant, not as a political refugee, nor as a young woman persecuted for her ideas, and after residing for the necessary ten years she opted for Spanish nationality, which was granted to her. At no time was she a militant or activist sympathetic to the Polisario. If she had been, she would never have been admitted as a member of the Spanish parliament because of her membership of an armed movement. SUMAR recruited her to show her off to its electorate, nothing more.
I think it is extremely delicate that President Sánchez has in his government team people, as is the case of Vice-President Díaz, who threaten the interests and sovereignty of Morocco and make agreements with an armed terrorist movement.
We understand that the Spanish people show their solidarity with our fellow Saharawi citizens kidnapped and overcrowded in the so-called "refugee camps" of Tindouf, in Algeria; we understand that thousands of Spanish families express their affection for the children suffering in these camps of shame, and welcome them on holiday; we understand that the Spanish authorities help hundreds of young people fleeing this hell of internment to pursue their secondary and university studies and to carve out a future far from the prisons of Tindouf; we understand all this.
But what hurts us and what we cannot accept is that a party that is part of the coalition government should make a pact with a terrorist movement. The Sahrawi population is one thing, the Polisario is another. The Saharawi women, children and young people, who are our fellow Moroccans, are one reality; the puppet entity of the separatist group, armed and supported by third countries, is quite another.
That said, all Moroccans, and especially Hispanists and Spanish-speakers, have taken great comfort from the visit to Rabat on Thursday 14 December by Minister José Manuel Albares. His meeting with eminent Moroccan Hispanists - a category to which I myself proudly belong - and Spanish educational leaders working in Morocco can legitimately be considered historic. We Moroccan Hispanists, intellectuals, academics, teachers, journalists, artists, writers, politicians, etc., are aware of the sometimes difficult journey we have had to make for decades in an environment not always favourable to our aspirations, and often disregarded by Spanish governments. Happily, we believe that this meeting can open a new stage in our relations, and we therefore qualify it as a great step forward.
We hope and wish, for the good of our countries, that President Pedro Sánchez remains true to his principles, respects his commitments and is even bolder in bilateral Spanish-Moroccan relations. We have a whole world ahead of us to conquer. Let us leave behind the darkness of confrontation and false superiority.
Signed: Boughaleb El Attar, journalist, writer, and expert on Spanish-Moroccan relations, as well as former ambassador of His Majesty Mohammed VI to the Republic of Cuba, and former political adviser to the Moroccan Embassy in Spain.
Explanatory note:
SUMAR has concluded an 11-point agreement with the Polisario Front to promote the demands of the separatist movement during the next legislature, according to the digital newspaper El Confidencial . The agreement is intended to be "informal".
The 11 points agreed between SUMAR and the POLISARIO just before the demonstration called in Madrid on 14 November 2023 in support of "the Saharawi cause" are preceded by a Preamble in which it is stated that the volte-face given by Pedro Sanchez in 2022 in affirming that the autonomy proposal formulated by King Mohammed VI "is the only serious one" to resolve the dispute, is "outside the law" and that "the position of the Spanish government is on the side of Morocco's expansionist pretension in Western Sahara".
Among the measures that SUMAR wants to put into practice is to present in Congress a non-legislative proposal (PNL) similar to the one that was approved, with the votes against of the PSOE, on 7 April 2022. On that day, Podemos, ERC and Bildu managed to get the Popular Party and Vox to join a text rejecting Sánchez's turnaround on the Sahara.
Other measures envisaged include.
- Making it easier for Sahrawis born during the time of colonisation, before 1976, to obtain Spanish nationality.
- Organising "high-level visits to the refugee camps in Tindouf".
- Organise delegation visits to the "occupied territories" of the Sahara.
- Unblock the €7 million aid for refugees foreseen in the 2023 Budget, but not implemented.
- Push the "Saharawi agenda" in all EU bodies in Brussels and the Strasbourg Parliament.
- Call for "Spain to assume its historical responsibilities towards the Saharawi people" by showing its "support for the right to self-determination as recognised by the United Nations".
- Coordinate the work in defence of the Saharawi people within the political space of SUMAR.
- To defend the human rights of the Saharawi people, which have been curtailed by the Moroccan occupier.