Spanish-Moroccan relations: the Sahara in the background

I did my military service in 1969-70 in the Sahara and, like my father with Tetouan, it entered into me in such a way that today it defines a large part of my research and emotional life. 

Tetouan became important to me again when I read ‘Aítta Tetouan’, by my fellow countryman Benito Pérez Galdós, who was here in October 1904, and of course when I read Rodolfo Gil Benjumea's book ‘El Marruecos andaluz’, listening to Hakim Azzous with his conversations in his house in Tetouan, which I would find it difficult to climb the stairs of today. 

I also remember my games of dominoes and tute in pairs, not to mention the fastest parcheesi of my life, the after-dinner conversations at the homes of my good friends from Tetouan: the Bennuna, Dalero, Torres, Aragón, Omar Azziman families (evenings with Jerónimo Saavedra) and many more, but well, enough of nostalgia and let's move on to what brings us here today. 

As Albert Einstein said, ‘it is easier to disintegrate the atom than to eradicate prejudice’, and relations between our countries are full of prejudices and disputes that hinder our joint journey. As Bernabé López tells us, ‘the image of a country that appears in the press is always filtered through a self-interested sieve. This is the case with Morocco as with any other country’. 

We could say that, in general, Morocco does not have a good press. I think this is true in much of Spain. No doubt there is no shortage of explanations for this: old wars of reconquest and colonial wars, the Moors of Asturias (1934), the Civil War, untimely decolonisations, territorial disputes, fishing tensions, agrarian conflicts, migratory pressures. 

At the same time, however, it must be acknowledged that, behind the negative aspects of Morocco, there are always strong interests at stake. Moreover, it must be acknowledged that negative news about Morocco ‘sells’ and the press tends to give priority to such news. 

I will now summarise our relations by outlining a series of stages that I believe are relevant. 

1. Relations in antiquity. 

• - Berbers and Iberians. 
• - Punics and Romans. 
• - Vandals - Visigoths and Byzantines. 
• - Islamisation. 
• - Caliphate and Taifas. 
• - Almoravids - Almohads and Benimerines. 

2. Relations after the capture of Granada. 

• Migrations to Morocco. 

1492 = Hispanic Jews and Muslims migrate to Morocco. 

1611 = Moors repopulate Northern Morocco. 

The Habsburgs - the Cherifian Saadids and the Ottomans. 

•  The Alaouis. Morocco an important player in the containment of the Turks. Good diplomatic relations with Spain, England and France. 

First country to recognise the United States of America. 

3.   The 19th century and Spanish and Moroccan decline. Spain invaded by France: reign of Joseph I Bonaparte, War of Independence, independence of Spanish America and Carlist wars (four if we count the Civil War of 1936-39). 

Morocco assaulted by French colonialism Isly battle (1841) and Spanish Moroccan War (1859-60). 

4.   20th century 

• - Mutilation of Morocco by Franco-Spanish colonialism. 
• - Hamada and western Algeria which was the Moroccan east annexed to Algeria by France. 
• - Mauritania, recognised by Morocco as a sovereign nation. 
• - French Protectorate: 1912-1955, French mutilation is completed in favour of Algeria and there are even plans to give French Algeria an Atlantic outlet. 
• - Rio de Oro. 
• - Sequia el Hamra: handed over to Spain by the French as a free territory in the protectorate agreement. 
• - Ifni 80% recovered in 1958, and the town returned in 1969 (it was never Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña, which was located in the Naila lagoon north of Tarfaya). 
• - Spanish Protectorate: 1912 - 1956 

Recovery of sovereignty: 

November 1955 - France. 

April 1956 - Spain: incomplete recovery, missing Ifni, southern protectorate and Western Sahara. 

• - War of Ifni and Sahara for incorporation into Morocco from November 1957 to April 1958, with the Sintra agreements. 
• - Episode of Perejil, 11 and 20 July 2002. 

It was not Franco who brought Moroccan soldiers to the peninsula for the first time to repress the population; the Second Republic (Black Biennium) used regular Moroccan forces against the Asturian miners in 1934. It is true that Franco was then Chief of Staff of the Army, with Gil Robles as minister. Here is an explanation of why part of the Spanish population has strong prejudices about Morocco, preferably the left, another part, the Francoists did not accept the surrender of the Sahara and saw it as a fraudulent annexation, taking advantage of Franco's illness and death. 

The unconditional support given by part of Spanish public opinion to the Polisario is not, for the most part, out of love for the Saharawi, but out of hatred for Morocco. 

Missed opportunities to solve the problem of Western Sahara by avoiding the suffering of its people and correcting the historical errors committed by Franco-Spanish colonialism. 

A.- Missed opportunities for Spain. 

• 1. Spain did not hand over all of West Africa to Morocco in April 1956, ignoring the advice of the USA (Eisenhower, May 1956) among other Western countries and even many Spanish diplomats. 

  2. When the Moroccan liberation army infiltrated into Spanish West Africa and mobilised a large part of the Sahrawi population, starting the Ifni-Saharan War. Spain could have withdrawn and the Sahara problem would not have existed, as the territory would have been integrated into the Kingdom of Morocco, from which it had been stripped. France convinced Spain to carry out the Ecouvillon occupation, given the danger posed by the revolt in Tindouf, El Atar and even in Saint Louis, capital of the Mauritanian emirate of Tarfaya. 

  Following the success of Operation Ecouvillon, Spain began a process of creating a Saharan public opinion of confrontation with Morocco, promoting the idea of a territory separate from its Maghreb environment. 

  The idea of the ‘Sahrawi people’ was created by the Presidency of the Spanish Government and used for the first time publicly by Admiral Carrero Blanco in 1973. 

B.- The International Court in The Hague. 

The ambiguity (calculated?) of the Hague ruling on the concept of sovereignty and its forceful conclusion, however, with weak argumentation, led to different positions on its interpretation. 

As Bernabé López García tells us, quoting Abdallah Laroui: ‘As far as the concept of sovereignty is concerned, Morocco relies on the logic of Islamic law, while Mauritania relies on tribal logic, and Spain and Algeria on Western colonial logic, which dictates that sovereignty prior to European expansionism is, at best, inconclusive’. 

Mexican professor and diplomat Andrés Ordoñez tells us in his book ‘Mexico, Morocco and Western Sahara’: ‘Even the contradictory ruling of the International Court of Justice issued on 16 October 1975 on the subject is highly questionable from a contemporary, culturally diverse perspective. The supposedly decolonising justification that animated the ruling paradoxically assumed the historical vision of the region constructed by the colonialist powers themselves. In effect, by ignoring the relevance of the political-cultural particularities of the region in dispute, the Court gave a historiographical bias contrary to the decolonising spirit it intended. 

How can it be explained that the Court, having recognised legal and territorial links, denies sovereignty links? The answer has to do with the imposition of a hegemonic cultural perspective, alien to the area in conflict. The Hague jurists overlooked the fact that, throughout history, sovereignty has been exercised differently to the north and south of the Mediterranean. While in the north the notion of territorial control has prevailed, in the south, until European colonial rule, the political value of loyalty was paramount by virtue of the nomadic nature of the population. What in the Western tradition is the accession of depositing sovereignty in the sovereign, in the Arab tradition is the Be'ya, a term which in French translates as allégeance and in Spanish as pleitesía. The Be'ya has a double implication. Politically, it is a recognition of the legitimacy of the sovereign (formerly the sultan and today the king of Morocco) and, therefore, of his authority over the territories covered by his nomadic journeys. In religious terms, it is a recognition of the King of Morocco as commander of the believers (Amir Al-Mu'minin) and head of the Malekite rite, one of the four rites of Sunni Islam, which is also the predominant rite in West Africa and, therefore, when the King of Morocco visits the countries of that sub-region, the effect is similar to that produced by the Pope when he visits Spanish-Lusitanian America. 

C.- Missed opportunities after Spain's exit. 

James Baker presented a Framework Agreement in 2001, which was rejected by Algeria and the Polisario and which could have resolved the dispute in a manner very similar to the Moroccan proposal that is now accepted by many countries, including Spain. Baker's proposal laid the foundations for building a Greater Maghreb of regions (today autonomous regions), as part of a democratisation of the North African area. The Polisario made a big mistake in not accepting it, which prolonged the suffering of the population living in the camps and was a major impediment to continuing the construction of the Greater Maghreb. This Baker plan was along the lines that Serfaty envisioned in his letter to Bouteflika in January 2000. 

In 2003, Baker presented the peace plan for the self-determination of the inhabitants of Western Sahara, which was quickly accepted by the Polisario and Algeria because it meant being able to carry out electoral campaigns in Morocco without the guarantee of preventing large-scale conflicts that could destabilise the kingdom. 

In 2004 and 2005, Morocco launched the Equity and Reconciliation Instance, which involved recognising and compensating individuals and communities harmed in the years of lead and establishing responsibility for human rights violations. 

This action by Morocco could have culminated in an agreement between the parties in view of the change that had taken place, but neither Algeria nor the Polisario were interested in perpetuating the dispute rather than in resolving it. 

In 2007, Morocco presented its autonomy plan, which was accepted by the United Nations, which no longer recommended the referendum as a solution. Today, the USA, Spain, Germany, Holland, France, the Arab League and numerous nations (more than 115) have understood that autonomy is the best solution to the dispute. 

I believe that the next steps will be taken by the EU and the UN, although it is very difficult to set a timeframe, as all the forces opposed to this solution, led by Algeria, are using all their weapons, bribes, blackmail, threats, disinformation... to prevent it. 

D.- Hopeful future. 

- Construction of the Greater Maghreb (upwards). 

- Decentralisation of the Maghreb countries (downwards). 

- Inter-regional cooperation. 

- Democratisation of the Maghreb nations, Morocco is in an advantageous situation, Tunisia has regressed, Mauritania is advancing, but with many difficulties, and Libya is in conflict and almost bankrupt. 

- Algeria has high hopes for the behaviour of its people, but the military gerontocracy and the submission of the F.L.N. to it still hinders democratic progress, which in my opinion is unstoppable in the medium term. 

I would not like to end my speech without quoting a lecture at the Elcano Institute by the then Moroccan Ambassador to Spain, Omar Azziman, in which he stated that ‘comparisons in Morocco should not be limited to the past, but should also be made with the Morocco we want’. 

Morocco's progress with respect to the past is evident, including its comparison with other neighbouring countries, but much remains to be achieved, and the pace of the necessary reforms is sometimes slow. 

Speech at the Congress of Journalists of the Strait held in Tétouan