How Mohammed VI managed Moroccan-Spanish relations for a quarter of a century
The Moroccan king witnessed many of the crucial moments experienced by Moroccan-Spanish relations, which familiarised him with the details of relations between the Moroccan and Spanish crowns and their great contradictions.
He was influenced by the human relations between his late father, King Hassan II, and his friend, the Spanish King Juan Carlos I, who shed hot royal tears in front of the Crown Prince, who became King, at the time of the funeral of the late King Hassan II, whom Juan Carlos called ‘big brother’, at which point Juan Carlos told the new Moroccan King a phrase similar to the pact: ‘Today the big brother is me’.
King Mohammed VI, a crown prince, was following the details of the profound transformations in the Iberian Peninsula, and aware of the importance of Spain for his country, even during his second official visit to Spain in May 1997, he said in a rare interview with the famous newspaper El País: ‘In Moroccan-Spanish relations there are no problems without solutions’.
When King Mohammed VI ascended the throne from his predecessors in the summer of 1999, he would find problems facing Moroccan-Spanish relations, one of which was the problem of renewing the fisheries agreement between Morocco and the European Union, Spain's fossilised position on the Moroccan Sahara issue, the support of the Spanish street and parties for the separatist Polisario Front, and the accelerating events associated with the cities of Ceuta and Melilla since the mid-1990s.
On top of that, there was a right-wing Popular Party government headed by a right-wing figure, José María Aznar, whose cord of friendship was not connected to him and the late King Hassan II to the extent that the Moroccan monarch captured Abdul Wahid al-Radi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives at the time, and was preparing to visit Spain in 1998 when he ‘felt uncomfortable with relations with Spain’ in light of the presence of such a figure as José María Aznar.
King Hassan II's prophecy would come true when Aznar began to harass Morocco to impose his conditions for the renewal of the fisheries agreement, which King Mohammed VI resolutely confronted, and his ambassador Abdel Salam withdrew from Madrid as Spanish harassment increased, and bilateral relations entered the tug-of-war stage.
Aznar strengthened relations with US President George W. Bush after the last September 11, 2001 and the build-up to the war against Iraq, and also tried to remove some Moroccans from a small rock island called ‘Perejil’ in the summer of 2002, whom Morocco had placed to monitor illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
Aznar led a military operation that showed a lot of muscle in evacuating the Moroccan rock; It was a great test of the new Moroccan king's foreign policy at the time and mainly in relations with Spain, managed by the young King with much wisdom, sobriety and a refined diplomatic approach that surprised international observers, so much so that US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who led the mediation process between the two countries, did not hesitate to wake Ana Palacio, the Spanish Foreign Minister at the time, at dawn to resolve the problem with Morocco. ‘It would have been the first war over a trivial situation,’ he told a US magazine in 2004.
King Mohammed VI continued to believe that between Morocco and Spain there are always solutions to all problems, which made him agree to grant an exceptional licence to fishermen from the Galician region to fish in Moroccan waters months after the crisis on Perejil Island following the environmental disaster caused by the oil tanker ‘Prestige’, and his wise policy succeeded in returning the water to its fishermen by convening the two countries for the joint Moroccan-Spanish summit in Marrakech in December 2003, opening a new page with the Kingdom of Morocco's northern neighbour.
There is no doubt that the change that Spain witnessed with the arrival of the Socialists in Madrid's Moncloa Palace after the 14 March 2004 elections, and the departure of the president after the train explosions that rocked Atocha station on 11 March 2004, would give King Mohammed VI a golden opportunity to advance Moroccan-Spanish relations in all areas of bilateral cooperation, and Spain would gradually drag Spain to understand the fairness of the Moroccan position on the Moroccan Sahara issue, and at this stage the calm character of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the credibility of his foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, among Moroccan officials, would play a fundamental role in the political rapprochement between the two countries, especially as together they were convinced of the need to find a solution. The Moroccan Sahara issue is outside the logic of the referendum, which is beyond it.
Regardless of the summer cloud that marked relations between the two countries after the visit of the King and Queen of Spain to Ceuta and Melilla in autumn 2007, the priority that King Mohammed VI was giving to relations with the Spanish crown and his deep desire to dissolve differences into a web of overlapping interests was crucial in the process of overcoming differences and moving towards cooperation. Just as the Moroccan proposal to grant the Saharawi regions extended autonomy was an opportunity for Spain to revisit its vague historical position on the Moroccan Sahara issue. Spanish diplomacy showed great understanding of the Moroccan proposal, but the hordes of pro-secessionists were the biggest obstacle in the face of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and a number of Spanish Socialist Party rulers who are aware of Morocco's importance as a reliable partner at a time of economic crisis that ravaged the Iberian Peninsula's economy.
The return of the Popular Party to power after the November 2011 elections was a worrying change for decision-makers in the Kingdom of Morocco, but this concern quickly turned into positive energy to advance relations between the two countries. King Mohammed VI showed great political and diplomatic readiness and insight in making the right abandon its historical contract and pursue its immediate interests with Morocco, just as the right realised its previous mistakes and stepped out of the circle of influence of its hardline current, and even its leader Mariano Rajoy won more than once for the importance of the proposal to govern in public and supported it on more than one occasion in secret.
A new Spain was born on the night of 20 December 2015 when new parties entered parliament, mainly the far-left Podemos party, against Morocco's territorial integrity, just as the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party experienced an earthquake that resulted in the arrival of a new generation with a non-moderate ideology to maintain the party's leadership, as Morocco's old friends dressed in the back ranks, and Rajoy began to be politically sidelined, everything was changing inside Spain, and Morocco's eye was on everything that was happening, and even when Rajoy was ousted from the Moncloa Palace after the success in the history of Spanish democracy on 1 June 2018.
Morocco tried to build bridges with the newcomer, but Socialist Pedro Sánchez's convictions overpowered him at various times and he did not realise about relations with Morocco until after a heated confrontation in the summer of 2021.
Morocco had by then become convinced that there was no partnership without the partners' respect for the Kingdom's territorial integrity. After difficult months of crisis, Morocco emerged victorious with Pedro Sánchez's announcement of a historic shift in Madrid's position on the Sahara issue from support for self-determination to support for Morocco's autonomy plan. That was a diplomatic ‘coup’ for King Mohammed VI, and the title of a great success during a quarter century of quiet diplomacy and after the Moroccan monarch accompanied the tidal voyage with Spain, which was led by extracting historic support for the Moroccan autonomy project from the former coloniser of the Sahara, inflicting on Morocco's enemies a painful punishment.
For a quarter of a century, King Mohammed VI managed to turn his word as crown prince into reality: ‘In Moroccan-Spanish relations there are no problems without solutions’.
Nabil Driouch, writer specialising in Moroccan-Spanish relations.
ARTICLE PUBLISHED at: https://elaph.com