Marta BelverSpecial envoy Rabat
Special Envoy Rabat
Updated Wednesday, February 21, 2024-11:50
Diplomacy Sánchez travels to Morocco on an official visit one year after the installation of Mohamed VI
Foreign Affairs Algeria postpones Albares' trip, which meant the normalization of relations, 12 hours in advance
Mohamed VI receives
Pedro Sánchez
this Wednesday
during an express visit by the President of the Government to Morocco. The meeting was scheduled on the Alawite monarch's agenda, but Moncloa did not confirm it until a few hours before it took place after the president of the African country stood up to the Spanish leader at the High Level Meeting that both nations held at the beginning of February of last year in Rabat.
After landing in Rabat, Sánchez will go to the Guest Palace, which according to sources from the Spanish delegation is opened "relatively infrequently", which is considered a "gesture" towards the president. Later he will have a meeting with his Moroccan counterpart,
Aziz Ajanouch
, followed by a lunch offered by Mohamed VI, but without his presence.
It will be later when the Spanish president meets with the monarch in a royal audience. In this meeting, according to Moncloa sources, issues such as cooperation in the control of illegal immigration and preparations for the 2030 World Cup will be addressed.
Sánchez's team points out that this is the fifth official trip he has made to Morocco since he became president and the first after the start of the new legislature, which they say "underlines the deep ties" that unite two neighbors who share borders. land and sea. "A relationship based on trust, compliance with what was agreed, respect and permanent dialogue," they highlight.
During the last visit of the Spanish president to Rabat, Mohamed VI dispatched the protocol contact with a phone call from Gabon and an invitation for a subsequent in-person meeting with no fixed date that had not occurred until now. From Moncloa they then downplayed this issue as it was a High Level Meeting "between governments", although the usual practice since the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborhood in 1991 had been the holding of a meeting between both leaders within the framework of this type of summits.
The Government highlights that "trade and investment relations are especially fruitful" with Morocco. Spain is its first trading partner and aspires to become a leading investor, while bilateral trade between it exceeded 20 billion euros in 2022 and continues to increase.
"The level of cooperation in security matters is also high, both in the fight against terrorism, organized crime and irregular immigration and mafias that traffic in human beings," Sánchez's team adds. This collaboration reduced the arrivals of canoes to the Canary Islands from the Moroccan coasts by 25.6% in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to data provided by the Ministry of the Interior.
New diplomatic stage
The new diplomatic stage between both nations was sealed at the high-level summit held last year after having previously been channeled in the meeting between Sánchez and Mohamed VI in April 2022. This meeting took place after the President of the Government sent a letter to the monarch in which he informed him that he supported the proposal for the Sahara to be an autonomous region within Morocco was the "most serious, credible and realistic" basis to resolve the problem.
This 180-degree turn in the position that Spain had maintained regarding its former colony since 1975 made it possible to overcome the last crisis between Madrid and Rabat due to the hospitalization in Logroño and under a false identity of the leader of the Polisario Front,
Brahim Ghali
, and which was responded to with a massive arrival of irregular migrants to Ceuta - more than 10,000 in just over 24 hours - without the Moroccan security forces doing anything to prevent it. As a symbolic gesture of the new relationship with the neighboring country, Sánchez chose Marrakech last summer to spend a few days on vacation with his family.