Western Sahara: Madrid Denies Granting Air Sovereignty to Morocco

Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares denied that Pedro Sanchez’s government had considered transferring Western Sahara’s airspace to the Moroccan regime, thus denying the rumours that have recently spread about the existence of negotiations between Rabat and Madrid to end Spanish air sovereignty over Western Sahara.

On Wednesday, December 18, 2024, Albares denied what was circulated in this regard, saying: I “categorically” deny Madrid’s relinquishment of air sovereignty over Western Sahara. This was in response to a question by Spanish Senator John Iñárritu, who accused the Spanish government of submitting to the Moroccan regime.

It was clear from the Spanish Foreign Minister’s response that he avoided appearing as a man of the Moroccan regime in the Spanish government, as he spoke about a roadmap adopted by the Madrid government in dealing with the Moroccan regime, in the letter sent by Pedro Sanchez to the King of Morocco in April 2022, through which he supported, as is known, the Moroccan autonomy plan in Western Sahara, and caused a diplomatic rift with Algeria.

The Spanish MP relied on reports that talked about opening an air route between Spanish cities and the occupied Sahrawi city of Dakhla, operated by Ryanair, which he said constitutes a flagrant violation of the European Court of Justice’s decision, which ruled in early October that the Moroccan regime has no sovereignty over the Sahrawi territories, before Iñárritu asked: “Do you expect to transfer the air sovereignty of Western Sahara, which is administered by Spain, to Morocco?”

The Spanish minister tried to distance the government from the private company “Ryanair” launching flights between Madrid and the occupied Sahrawi city of Dakhla, on the pretext that it is a private company, but the representative of the Basque region in northern Spain, reminded him that there is a ruling issued by the European Court of Justice stating that agreements, even if they are from private companies, cannot be approved without the consent of the Sahrawis, noting that the flights are governed by a license from the public company “Enair” responsible for organizing flights in Spanish airspace, without obtaining the consent of the Sahrawi people.

The MP explained in his address that “the United Nations decided that Spain would be the one to manage the airspace of Western Sahara and that any decision contrary to that would be contrary to international law, and for this reason, I requested that Congress (the Spanish Parliament) be informed in advance of any decision taken in this context.”

It is known that Spain, which left Western Sahara in the mid-seventies of the last century, is the one that manages the airspace in Western Sahara, based on United Nations resolutions, starting from the Canary Islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, adjacent to the occupied Sahrawi coasts, which means that Spain is complicit in allowing the establishment of an air route for a private company between Spanish cities and the occupied Sahrawi city of Dakhla.

Algerian-Spanish relations are experiencing a situation of fragility after the diplomatic and economic rift that lasted for about two years, but they began to recover little by little with the Spanish government’s cessation of support for the autonomy plan in the United Nations and other international forums, which Algeria considered a deviation from rationality on the part of the Spanish side, which now shares the same position on the Palestinian issue, unlike the positions of most European countries.

Madrid’s position to support Palestine is also considered much more honourable than the position of the Moroccan regime, which is complicit in this issue, demonstrated in the Alawite regime’s cooperation to hand over a Palestinian citizen wanted by the Zionist entity.