The crisis in relations with Algeria impacts the ceramic industry and tourism

• Foreign Affairs Algeria suspends the friendship treaty with Spain "immediately" after Sánchez reaffirms his lurch on the Sahara

• Economy The Government has not yet managed to unblock trade with Algeria and France and calls both for "dialogue"

The diplomatic crisis unleashed between

and

last June has not only had consequences in the energy sector but has also had an impact on the

and

.

On June 8, Algeria suspended the Treaty of Friendship as a reaction to the decision of the Government of

to support the Moroccan autonomy plan for the

and the Professional Association of Banks and Financial Entities (

) blocked all transactions with Spain.

This situation left the ceramic sector without the possibility of trading with its second export market and with losses of 25 million euros, as confirmed by El Mundo Fernando Fabra, president of the National Association of Manufacturers of Frits, Enamels and Ceramic Colors (

) .

.

50 days without sending their product to Algerian customers, which has meant that they have difficulty reaching the 120 million turnover with the North African country planned for 2022 in a normal context, which they still do not know when it can be resumed.

On July 29, the Algerian banks announced the lifting of the blockade, but the Government of Algiers did not support it.

"Now we are in an even worse situation of uncertainty, because no one dares to send a product so that it can be found later that it does not pass customs and remains in the port," explains Fabra, who calculates that in the Castellón factories there are around eight million euros in blocked materials waiting to be sent to Algeria.

Ceramic materials destined for Algeria stored in Castellón. EUGENIO TORRES

"We are hopeful that the situation can be resolved due to the internal pressure that the Algerian industry is exerting. We know that there are already factories stopped because they need our material and it does not arrive. But for us to export again, we first have to have security" , he warns.

Tourists with consumption capacity

Another industry with a strong weight in the GDP of the Valencian Community is tourism, which has also felt the pinch of the diplomatic crisis with Algeria.

The

Valencian tourism begins to reach the pre-pandemic levels of the summer of 2019 with hotel occupancy that closed July with occupancy data that exceeds 85% on average.

However, the Valencian hotel management puts the focus on the loss of the visitor from

: of the 20,000 seats scheduled at the

airport in 2019, it has gone to zero this summer.

"The hotel client from this country, despite not having a significant market share because it was around 1% in 2019, did have a high spending and consumption capacity,"

assures .

Algerian tourism declined in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic and barely touched 70,000 visitors throughout the country, a figure far removed from the 331,000 who visited Spain in 2019.

With the market recovering after the Covid crisis, the unleashed diplomatic conflict even led to the decision of a region in the north of the country to prohibit travel agencies from dealing with Spain, a decision that was quickly revoked by the Algiers government.

However, the contracting of vacation packages to the Alicante coast by Algerian agencies has disappeared, according to data provided by Hosbec.

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