When superstition reflects political reality

This “plate” is considered in popular belief to be a deeply symbolic gift, as it carries a coded message indicating that misfortune has befallen the Palace of El Mouradia, and that the only way to get rid of it is to return it to its origin by hanging the horseshoe on its door.  

Given this profound symbolic meaning, giving a horseshoe—whether from a horse, mule or donkey—is not an absurd act, but a sarcastic expression of the misfortune that weighs on the recipient. It is said in popular culture that the “horseshoe of beasts of burden” is hung on doors or buried in doorways, especially in houses believed to be marked by bad luck, in the hope of warding it off. 

Today, it seems the most appropriate object to hang on the door of the El Mouradia Palace, which has become something of a ‘source of bad luck’ for Algerian diplomacy and a centre of regional and international isolation. 

In the current political context, if this horseshoe were offered as a symbolic gift to the occupants of the El Mouradia Palace, it would sarcastically and forcefully express the chronic bad luck that characterises Algeria's foreign policy, which now only reaps failures: from the collapse of regional initiatives to the loss of diplomatic influence and growing Maghreb and international isolation. 

It is, quite simply, a horseshoe that mirrors the reality of failure: a policy trapped in the corners of misfortune, a diplomacy so incapable that it finds solace only in folkloric rituals that seek to restore some balance to what has collapsed. 

In conclusion, no matter how many ritual dinners or amulets are used, the bitter truth remains that bad luck does not come from an external curse, but is the result of absurd decisions, closed policies and a hostile ideology that has left Algeria a prisoner of its past and suffocated by its own positions. In the end, not even the horseshoe — a symbol of patience and endurance in popular folklore — will be able to help a diplomacy fuelled by resentment and managed with stubbornness and mistrust. 

Lahoucine Bekkar Sbaai, Lawyer at the Bar of the Courts of Appeal of Agadir and Laayoune, researcher on migration and human rights and expert on the Moroccan Sahara conflict.