Spain changes its footing on Western Sahara and now supports Moroccan sovereignty over its former colony, which since Spanish decolonization in the 1970s has been occupied by Morocco. “A historic betrayal”, laments the Western Saharan independence movement, Polisario.

“This move comes in a more serious context that the conflict in Western Sahara is going through after the outbreak of war in November 2020”, Hiba Abdalla, Polisario’s representative in Sweden and Norway, tells Swedish newspaper Tidningen Global.

By Klas Lundström

WESTERN SAHARA | Spain has made a political U-turn and changes its stand regarding its former colony, Spanish Sahara, known as Western Sahara. The government in Madrid from now on supports Morocco’s sovereignty. 

The government of Rabat, in its turn controlled by Moroccan king Muhammad VI, has occupied the West African nation since the mid-1970s, leading to a colonial war in the Sahara Desert that led to a ceasefire in the early 1990s, prompting a UN-led referendum on the former Spanish colony’s future.

But now, Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister since 2018, has written a letter to Morocco’s King Muhammad VI, in which promising his and Spain’s new stand on Western Sahara. Madrid from now on considers its former colony best operated as an autonomous region under Rabat’s control, the Spanish prime minister underlines.

“It’s the most serious, realistic and credible initiative to resolve the dispute”, the prime minister wrote, per ABC News’ reporting.

The Western Saharan liberation movement, Polisario, both regrets and condemns the Spanish government’s decision – also claiming it “absolutely contradicts legitimacy enshrined in the principles of the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Justice”.

“In addition, it will undermine the current efforts to revive and revitalize the peace process by the United Nations”, Hiba Abdalla, Polisario’s representative in Sweden and Norway, tells Tidningen Global.

Furthermore, Spain’s changed attitude occurs at a sensitive geopolitical stage, where Morocco has cemented its position as an indispensable non-member partner of the EU, using its importance to Europe in terms of a “migration wall” as political leverage. 

“From now on, we launch a new phase in our relations with Morocco and finally end a crisis with a strategic partner”, Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, told reporters, ABC News reports. 

Western Sahara’s vastly rich fishing territories and sulphur resources have also already been offered to Western states or private owned companies, thus undermining Western Sahara’s claims to these natural resources, which over forty states – the majority of them Latin American and African nations – regard as sovereign commodities owned by the Sahrawi people. 

Since 2020, armed conflict has replaced political negotiations and Western Saharan guerrilla forces, controlled by Polisario, are deepening its trench positions in the Sahara Desert, where they make their stand against a massively better armed and equipped Moroccan army; funded and trained by Western allies such as the United States and France.

Not far away from the frontlines, some 200,000 Sahrawi refugees reside in camps in southwestern Algeria. 

For many decades Spain supported the plans for a UN-led referendum on the future of Western Sahara, where the Sahrawis would be able to choose between being integrated into Morocco or build their own independent Sahrawi state. These plans, however, have been thoroughly battered by Morocco throughout the years, while the government in Rabat has made sure to move large numbers of Moroccans into Western Sahara in government-funded transmigration programs. And now, Spain openly discards the plan. 

Morocco’s political influence over the European Union in general – and over Spain in particular – has been concretized many times, and especially when the government in Rabat allowed some 10,000 migrants to cross the border into the Spanish North African enclave Ceuta last year – which Polisario labelled as “political blackmail” by Morocco against the European Union.

“Spain’s move takes place in a very serious context where the conflict in Western Sahara has broken out in war and where the situation in the region is very tense”, says Hiba Abdalla.

Spain’s decision may also prove to be illegal, Hiba Abdalla adds, as the former colony ruler cannot unilaterally evade its legal responsibility to Western Sahara and its people, “as it is the territory’s administrative power that awaits its decolonization”.

“Spain can’t turn its back on its political responsibility, as it is primarily responsible for the suffering of the Sahrawi people, and indeed all the peoples of the region, who have not yet been able to enjoy stability due to the bleeding wound left by the Spanish state”, Polisario’s representative in Sweden and Norway tells Tidningen Global.