Morocco's new regional project

The so-called Arab Spring of 2011 brought with it the end of some political regimes, such as Tunisia and Egypt, but it also meant that many traditional Muslim nations had to make changes to their political systems, due to the various demonstrations and popular movements that took place in several countries of the Maghreb and North Africa.

One such case was Morocco, and the so-called '20 February Movement', in which thousands of citizens were summoned via social networks and mobile phones to demonstrate in the country's major cities such as Casablanca, Rabat and Tangiers, among others, demanding a series of changes and reforms to the political system. Many of these demonstrations were based on economic, social and cultural conditions, including some of the Berber population's demands for constitutional recognition of the official status of their culture and language.

Faced with all these demands, the Moroccan government reacted and set up a commission to draft a constitutional project that could respond to all these demands. On 1 July 2011, by referendum, the new Moroccan Constitution was approved by a large majority of the Moroccan people, with a turnout of around 75% of the total electorate.

A year earlier, in January 2010, through a Royal Speech by Mohammed VI, the monarch promoted the so-called Régionalisation Avancée or Advanced Regionalisation, which created a consultative commission that could establish a new regionalisation model for the country, with the main requirement that, under no circumstances, would this new regional model question or attack national unity.

This new constitutional text was considered the beginning of an unprecedented stage in Morocco's constitutional and political history, as it broke away from previous reforms on some important points, such as the creation of a decentralised territorial model and the recognition of the country's cultural and linguistic diversity.

It is important to highlight this aspect, since Morocco, as a sovereign and independent nation, had never made any constitutional recognition or allusion to any culture or language other than Arabic.

Since 1956, when the Kingdom of Morocco gained its independence and put an end to the French and Spanish Protectorate that had existed since 1912, the Alawite kingdom had always opted for a unitary and strongly centralised territorial model, where there was no regional decentralisation or political recognition of any territorial entity below the central power.

Morocco's first constitution in 1962 did not establish any kind of regional division in the country, where the Arabic language and the Muslim religion were the country's main signs of identity. The territorial organisation of the country was limited only to the recognition of administrative entities such as the commune, prefecture or province, as was the case with the subsequent constitutional reforms of 1970 and 1972.

Despite this centralised structure, a territorial division of the country into seven regions was approved in 1971, taking into account economic or strategic reasons, and not to issues related to the country's cultural or linguistic diversity. In no case did this division entail any transfer of powers to these regions, nor the creation of a second power, parallel to the central power.

The constitutional reforms of 1992 and 1996 did, however, bring about the recognition of the region as a local authority, in a clear step towards the beginning of a future decentralisation, which would not end up crystallising into a true decentralised model, where there would be a full transfer of competences from the central power to the regional entities.

Nevertheless, the Moroccan central power continued to take steps towards the gradual establishment of a regional model, since in 1997 it approved a division into 16 regions for the whole country, which remained in force until 2015, when a new national law approved the reduction to 12 regions, which are the ones that currently make up the Kingdom of Morocco.

Within these first steps taken by the Moroccan central power towards the establishment of a regional model, the 2007 Autonomy Project proposed for Western Sahara should be noted. In this proposal, the Moroccan government offers an autonomy plan for this territory, in which we could highlight the transfer of a series of powers of its own, with the aim of constitutionally integrating this territory under Moroccan sovereignty.

Among the most outstanding features of this Autonomy Project, we can highlight the transfer of powers such as those relating to economic, fiscal, jurisdictional or financial matters, where the possibility of creating a police force of its own for the territory could be opened up.

Together with the possibility that this territory could assume its own powers, the central power would reserve exclusive matters such as those related to sovereignty, external representation, defence, or the constitutional powers attributed to the monarch, as the highest religious authority.

We would therefore be faced with a possible asymmetrical decentralised model, where a federation or regional state would recognise a series of singularities or particularities of a given region or territory, in order to give balance to its model, and could combine diversity without having to break the unity of the country. A model proposal that is well known in the Western world, as it would have certain parallels with the asymmetrical decentralised models of Canada, Belgium, Spain and Italy, among other examples.

The 2011 Constitution is a further step towards achieving territorial decentralisation, as it reaffirms Morocco's desire to establish a regional model for the country, since, for the first time in its constitutional history, a part of the Constitution is dedicated exclusively to the region, in its Title IX, entitled "Regions and other territorial collectivities". Furthermore, Article 1.4 of the 2011 Constitution proclaims that "the organisation of the Kingdom is decentralised and based on advanced regionalisation", clearly aiming for a separation of powers between central power and the power of each region.

The other relevant aspect, by which we can detect that Morocco wants to create a new regional model where plurality and diversity are recognised, can be seen in its Preamble, when it proclaims that the unity of the Kingdom of Morocco would be 'forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Amazigh and Saharan-Hassanian components', in addition to being nourished and enriched by 'its African, Andalusian, Hebraic and Mediterranean tributaries'. With this definition, the legislator does not speak of a single Arab-Islamic identity and culture, but cites other cultures present within Moroccan territory, where we can value two very important elements such as Amazigh and Saharan-Hassani.

Together with this element, Article 5 of the Moroccan Constitution of 2011, in turn, tells us that the Berber or Amazigh language is also an official language of Morocco, thus breaking with the tradition of the sole recognition of Arabic as the official language of Morocco.

This is why we could affirm that since 2011, with the approval of the new Constitution, Morocco has embarked on a path where it aspires to regionalise its territory, creating a regional level of power that would include the territory of the Sahara as a sovereign part of the Kingdom of Morocco, with its own powers as a region, in a possible asymmetrical model.

In recent years, where some countries such as the United States, France, Germany and the government of Pedro Sánchez in Spain have reportedly given legitimacy to the 2007 autonomy proposal, we find ourselves faced with the reopening of a question about the political future of this territory, which has remained unresolved for more than four decades.