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Madrid to reset ties with Morocco by backing Western Sahara stance

Spain announced Friday a "new stage" in its tense ties with Morocco after Madrid changed its position and backed Rabat's autonomy plan for the disputed Western Sahara territory. 

Madrid to reset ties with Morocco by backing Western Sahara stance
Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Jose Manuel Albares speaks to the press before an extraordinary Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Ukraine at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 25, 2022. (Photo by François WALSCHAERTS / AFP)

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Rabat’s 2007 proposal to offer Western Sahara autonomy within Morocco was the “most serious, realistic and credible basis” to end a decades-long dispute over the vast territory.   

Spain has until now tried to appear neutral on the issue of Western Sahara, a territory which Morocco considers its own but where an Algeria-backed independence movement demands a sovereign state.   

A desert region the size of Britain, it was a Spanish colony until 1975.   

Albares’ announcement mirrored the language of a statement from Morocco’s royal palace which said Spain’s prime minister had told the Moroccan king that Madrid backed the autonomy plan.   

In a statement, the Spanish government said a “new stage” in ties between Spain and Morocco had opened based on “mutual respect”.   

Spanish Prime minister Pedro Sanchez would visit Morocco as part of the renewal of ties, it added without setting a date.   

Albares will visit Morocco before the end of the month to prepare this visit, the statement said.   

Ignacio Cembrero, a Spanish journalist who is a leading expert on Morocco-Spain ties, said Madrid had “met Morocco’s main demand” that Madrid publicly back its autonomy plan.   

“Spanish authorities have always backed Morocco in recent years but discreetly,” he told AFP.   

Morocco’s foreign ministry it “highly appreciates Spain’s positive positions and constructive commitments on the issue of the Moroccan Sahara”.   

The Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which has long fought for Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco, has demanded a referendum to resolve the conflict.   

The Spanish branch of the group accused Spain of giving in to “blackmail and the politics of fear used by Morocco”.   

Ties between Spain and Morocco hit a low after Madrid in April 2021 allowed Western Sahara independence leader Brahim Ghali into a Spanish hospital when he was very sick with Covid.   

The following month Spain was caught off guard when more than 10,000 people swam or used small inflatable boats to enter its tiny north African enclave of Ceuta as Moroccan border forces looked the other way.   

Morocco’s ambassador to Spain was recalled for consultations during the Ceuta crisis and has still not returned to her post. 

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POLITICS

First pardons granted under Spain’s amnesty for Catalan separatists

A politician and police officer on Tuesday became the first people to benefit from Spain's divisive amnesty law for Catalan separatists involved in a botched 2017 secession bid.

First pardons granted under Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists

The amnesty law – approved last month – is expected to affect around 400 people facing trial or already convicted over their roles in the wealthy northeastern region’s failed independence push, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez agreed to grant the amnesty in exchange for the key support of Catalan separatist parties in parliament to secure a new term in office following an inconclusive general election last July.

READ ALSO: Spain’s contested Catalan amnesty bill comes into force

The separatist parties have threatened to withdraw their support for Sánchez’s minority government unless the amnesty is applied.

Catalonia’s High Court said it had decided to “declare the extinction of criminal responsibility” for former Catalan regional interior minister Miquel Buch, as well as to Lluís Escolà, an officer in Catalonia’s regional police force, since the crimes they were convicted of “have been amnestied”.

Buch was sentenced last year to four and a half years in jail for embezzlement and misappropriation for hiring Escolà in 2018 and paying him out of public coffers to act as a bodyguard for the former head of the regional Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, while he was in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

Escolà was handed a four-year prison sentence for working as Puigdemont’s bodyguard.

Puigdemont fled Spain to avoid arrest shortly after his government led Catalonia’s failed secession push, which involved an independence referendum that was banned by the courts followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.

Spain’s conservative opposition has staged massive street protests against the amnesty law, which judges must decide to apply on a case-by-case basis.

Puigdemont had said he hopes to return to Spain but there is still a warrant for his arrest and a Spanish court continues to investigate him for the alleged crimes of embezzlement and disobedience related to the secession bid.

He also remains under investigation for alleged terrorism over protests in 2019 against the jailing of several referendum leaders that sometimes turned violent.

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