Morocco Plays The Immigration Card And Gas Is Spain’s Weapon

All eyes in Algeria, Rabat and Madrid are on the results of next month’s general elections in Spain and the impact they will have on relations between Algeria and Madrid on the one hand, and Rabat and Madrid on the other, i.e. whether the current “status quo” will continue, or whether the situation will be reversed, or whether there will be a third way.
The restoration of relations with Algeria is at the top of the list of priorities for the Spanish People’s Party, according to more than one party official, in the event of its expected victory in the primaries, which is expected on 23 July, and which has become almost certain in the light of the results of an opinion poll. This is in light of the results obtained by the party in last month’s local and regional elections, which, as is well known, led to a resounding victory over its rival, the Socialist Party, which currently leads the government under the leadership of the controversial Pedro Sanchez.
This approach was expressed by more than one official of the opposition Spanish People’s Party, which is a strong candidate to lead the next government, in the form of the party’s leader, Alberto Nunez Viejo, and finally by the other leader, Esteban Gonzalez Pons, to the newspaper El Independent, who spoke of an immediate revision of the Spanish position on the Sahrawi issue in order to restore relations with Algeria.
Such statements did not impress the Moroccan Makhzen regime, which thought it had settled the Western Sahara issue with the stroke of Pedro Sanchez’s pen, just as happened with Trump’s “tweet”, which turned into the biggest lie, prompting many Moroccan analysts in the orbit of the Moroccan Makhzen regime to talk about preparing the illegal immigration card to put pressure on the Spanish position, but they ignore that the most dangerous card is in the hands of the Spaniards, which is the card of the reverse flow of gas through the European Maghreb gas pipeline, which Algeria stopped at the end of October 2021.
However, a lot has changed in the last two years, and although the Moroccan regime still has the card of illegal immigrants to put pressure on the Spanish side, it forgets that the Spanish have acquired a very dangerous card since Algeria stopped work on the European-Maghreb gas pipeline in the autumn of 2021.
It is well known that this pipeline supplied the Alawi kingdom with considerable quantities of Algerian gas free of charge, in the form of fees for the passage of the pipeline through its territory, in addition to funds estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, also in the form of fees, and that is why, when the pumping stopped, two of the power stations, Tandrat and Beni Mazhar, were paralyzed for eight months and did not return to work until the gas was pumped back from Spain through the stopped pipeline.
Morocco’s switch to gas supplies through the reverse flow of the Maghreb-European gas pipeline from Spain has left the Moroccan storage system at the mercy of Madrid, which now holds the key to shutting down the Alawi kingdom’s electricity production, because it does not have the slightest infrastructure for diluting and storing gas, which prevents it from importing. From other countries, simply because it was totally dependent on gas imported from Algeria, that is to say, from the pipeline to the factory or the kitchen, and it did not prepare well beyond Algerian gas.
There is no doubt that the Moroccan regime’s use of the migrant card against Spain puts it in the face of all the countries of the European Union, since the cities of Ceuta and Melilla are considered by Brussels to be the southern borders of the Union, This means that the use of this card will be accompanied by more political sanctions, and the matter may develop into economic sanctions, at a time when the Moroccan economy is considered fragile due to its dependence on foreign loans, which has heavily burdened the state and the Moroccan people.