President Tebboune’s Eloquent Messages to Spain
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s speech, during the state visit that led him to Italy, was not without eloquent messages addressed directly to Spain, whose government headed by Pedro Sanchez is in an unenviable situation, since it adopted the decision to support the autonomy project proposed by the Moroccan Makhzen regime regarding Western Sahara.
President Tebboune said in a press conference he held Thursday with his Italian counterpart, Sergio Mattarella, that “Italy will be the distributor of Algerian gas in Europe”, a statement that seems normal as long as Rome is Algeria’s traditional partner in the field of energy and other sectors, but it is quite far from that.
Italy is Algeria’s first customer in the field of gas, and the Trans-Med “Enrico Mattei” gas pipeline, linking Algerian and Italian soil through Tunisia, is the first of its kind in history, although Algeria has two gas pipelines connecting it to Spain, namely “Medgaz” and the Maghreb-European pipeline (MEG; also known as the Pedro Duran Farell pipeline or Gazoduc Maghreb Europe – GME) that has been suspended by a decision from Algeria since the beginning of last November, the partnership with Madrid did not rise to the level of partnership between Algeria and Rome.
President Tebboune’s speech, although it expressed the level of trust between Algeria and Italy, was in the process of sending a message to the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, who betrayed the covenant and sold his country’s position at a “cheap price” to a regime that does not deserve this privilege, which is the Makhzen regime that does not take into account friendship and customs.
Until recently, Spain was on the verge of becoming an exclusive distributor of Algerian gas to European countries, and for this, it built huge infrastructures in the field of gas storage and transfer and spent billions of euros on it, and intended to use in storing imported Algerian gas through pipelines. However, in a moment of political insanity, Pedro Sanchez committed a folly by antagonizing Algeria for free, when he abandoned his country’s historical position on the issue of Western Sahara, and he is aware of the sensitivity of this file for a partner like Algeria.
Unfortunately for the Spanish party, its wrong decision came at the wrong time, i.e. in the circumstance in which the world is witnessing a stifling energy crisis due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, which raised its prices to record levels that have not been recorded for nearly a decade and increased the internal pressure on the country. The Prime Minister of Madrid, whose government was solely responsible for the diplomatic crisis with Algeria and its repercussions on the Spanish interior affairs as well, after the Algerian authorities decided to review the prices of gas exported to Spain, to the exclusion of other countries importing Algerian gas.
President Tebboune’s message from Rome to Madrid also came on the day when the Spanish Parliament was discussing changing the Sanchez government’s position on the Western Sahara issue, which intensified pressure on the ruling Socialist Party, which is now more threatened than ever by the fall of its government. The coalition, about a year before the date of the next legislative elections, is expected to be fatal to the Spanish socialists, according to many observers.
On the same day, after intense discussions, the Spanish Parliament called for the third time in about two weeks, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, to correct his country’s position on the Saharawi issue, and demanded that he return to supporting the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination, which is the historical position of Madrid as the colonial power that directs the occupied Sahraoui areas, while it is not excluded that the pressure on the Sanchez government will intensify if it does not respond to Parliament’s repeated demands in this regard.
What is remarkable in this case is that the leftist Podemos party, which is part of the government coalition, continued to stand by the various components of the political scene that reject Sanchez’s position on the Western Sahara issue, which made him isolated at home amid the spread of doubts about becoming a hostage in the hands of the Moroccan Makhzen regime, which managed to gain access to secrets on his cellphone that was the subject of espionage through the Zionist “Pegasus” program, while externally, he remains rejected by a partner with the size of Algeria, which made him threatened with the fall of his government, in light of the multiple scandals that accompanied the normalization of his country’s relations with the Moroccan Makhzen regime.
