President Tebboune’s Messages To The Spanish People And To Their King

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune drove another wedge into the coffin of relations with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during his last meeting with representatives of the public media, blaming him alone for the diplomatic crisis affecting relations between the two countries, and not the Spanish people and their King Felipe VI.
Asked about Algerian-Spanish relations, President Tebboune said: “There is nothing new, and I personally regret very much the situation that relations between Algeria and Madrid have reached, and Algeria is not to blame. They took the wrong step and the Spanish people are innocent”. And he went on to stress: “Our relations with the Spanish people are very good, and we respect the Spanish King very much and he knows that.”
On the other hand, the head of state left the door ajar for the Spanish to correct what Pedro Sanchez had distorted, without mentioning him by name, when he confirmed that Algeria had not denounced the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborliness signed with Madrid in 2002, but had merely frozen it. This means that the estrangement has not reached the point of no return.
They are precise and clear phrases, loaded with many messages to the neighbor on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, and they match the description of many political elites and opposition parties in Spain, who see that the ruling Socialist Party has made a terrible mistake that has led to the punishment of the Spanish people and its economic elite for mistakes they didn’t make.
In the months following the “unfriendly” Spanish position, as President Tebboune said, on the Western Sahara issue, the prices of Algerian gas exported to Madrid were increased in the contracts concluded between the two sides, and the wheel of commercial exchanges between the two countries, with the exception of the energy sector, has almost come to a standstill.
This has caused huge losses for Spanish traders linked to the Algerian market, prompting them to file a lawsuit against their country’s government for compensation.
The political class in Spain is almost unanimous to assert that the decision of Pedro Sanchez’s government to alter its country’s position on the Sahrawi issue in a way that serves the interests of the Moroccan Makhzen regime at the expense of the Sahrawi people and Algeria, a friend of Madrid, is an unforgivable political mistake that has harmed the interests of the Spanish people.
Spanish circles have questioned the constitutionality of the decision of the Pedro Sanchez government to change Madrid’s position on the Saharawi issue without consulting the institutions of the Spanish state, headed by King Felipe VI, since in Spain the King is considered a constitutional institution that enjoys consultative status when taking important decisions, not to mention the rest of the political forces participating in the government, such as the Podemos party, and even other opposition parties, such as the Popular Party, which are still demanding explanations from the government on the background of the change that has taken place, but to no avail.
President Tebboune’s words, in so far as they are addressed to the Spanish state institutions, which are not involved in the deviation of the position on the Sahrawi issue, are also addressed to the Spanish people, a few months away from the date of the Spanish general elections, expected before the end of this year, in order to assume their responsibility to repair what Pedro Sanchez has spoiled with Algeria, by punishing the ruling Socialist Party in the next elections, in order to preserve its interests with Algeria, because the one who paid the price for Sanchez’s sin was the Spanish people, whose pockets were inflamed by the high prices of gas and electricity.