Spain PM in Morocco to mend fences after crisis
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was in Rabat on Thursday to reset a “strategic partnership” despite criticism from within his left-wing government that it has caved in to Moroccan pressure.
Sanchez and a dozen ministers are set to meet Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akkhanouch for the first “high level meeting” of its kind since 2015.
His visit comes less than a year after he drew a line under a year-long diplomatic crisis by reversing decades of neutrality on the Western Sahara conflict to back Morocco’s position, sparking anger among his far-left coalition partners.
Sanchez has defended his move as essential for Spanish interests.
Addressing an economic forum on Wednesday evening, he said that “the better relations are between Morocco and Spain, the better it is for Spain, the better it is for Morocco, the better it is for Europe and for the citizens of both countries”.
The crisis had begun in 2021 when Madrid allowed Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front which seeks independence in the Western Sahara, to be treated for Covid-19 in a Spanish hospital.weeks later, more than 10,000 migrants surged into Spain’s tiny Ceuta enclave as Moroccan border forces looked the other way, an incident seen as a Moroccan move to punish Madrid.
In March last year, Madrid announced a “new stage” in relations and said it backed the North African kingdom’s plan for the Western Sahara of limited autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.
The following month, Sanchez paid a high-profile visit to Morocco and was hosted by King Mohammed VI.
But Sanchez has faced criticism from both left and right for the concession to Morocco, including from his administration’s number three, Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz of the hard-left Podemos party.
She has declined to join this week’s trip, in line with her hardleft Podemos party’s rejection of Sanchez’s “unilateral” u-turn on the Western Sahara.
Spain’s right-wing opposition has also slammed Sanchez over the policy, with Gonzalez Pons, a member of the European parliament from the Popular Party, saying there was “no greater humiliation than bowing to the will of Morocco”. —