Spain negotiates with Morocco the maritime border with the Canary Islands

From the waters of the Canary IslandsSánchez said last night in his appearance in Rabat that Spain and Morocco will reactivate the working group on the delimitation of maritime spaces on the Atlantic façade with the aim of achieving concrete progresss, some agreements that have to be protected by the United Nations.

These negotiations are key to settling the competitions on the space located beyond the 200 miles contemplated by the Exclusive Economic Exclusive Zone (ZEE) Canarian-Spanish, where there is an underwater treasure with deposits of tellurium and cobalt in the so-called Tropic Mountain. These two materials are essential for the manufacture of solar panels and batteries for electric cars.

Morocco, unilaterally, established at the beginning of 2020 a new demarcation of its territorial waters, annexing the maritime space of the Sahara that includes part of Mount Tropic. Thus, the Alawite kingdom establishes its waters up to 350 miles (648 kilometers) from the continental shelf. On these, the African country ensures that it has “the sovereign and exclusive rights” of the “seabed and subsoil for the purpose of exploration and exploitation of its mineral, fossil and biological natural resources.”

The new Moroccan demarcation establishes the perimeter of its territorial waters, set at 12 miles (22 kilometers), throughout Western Sahara, a territory whose sovereignty is pending resolution since Spain abandoned its colony in 1975. In addition, Morocco defines the 200 miles (370.4 kilometers) of its exclusive economic zone (over which the country has sovereign rights for its exploitation) and incorporates the 350 miles (648 kilometers) of the continental shelf (bed and subsoil of underwater areas).

The new norm mentions “sovereign and exclusive rights” over that surface in the “seabed and subsoil for the purpose of exploration and exploitation of its mineral, fossil and biological natural resources.”

The dispute with Spain affects both the delimitation of the maritime median between the Canary Islands and the Moroccan coastwhich both countries have pending after the failure of the nine negotiating rounds between 2003 and 2007, as well as the expansion of the continental shelf that Spain has requested in 2014 before the UN Boundary Commission and that Morocco does not accept as it understands that overlaps part of the Saharawi waters that it is just now incorporating as its own in its new map of maritime sovereignty.

These seamounts, on the continental shelf, which have been baptized as the grandmothers of the Canary Islands because they originated in the same geomorphological processes that gave rise to the Archipelago, number in the dozens and have mostly been discovered over the last few decades. The vast majority fall within the 200 nautical miles of the Canary-Spanish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), so it is the State, and therefore also the Islands, that has the power to extract and exploit natural resources. The problem is that the seamount that concentrates, by far, most of the tellurium and cobalt is precisely the one that is not within the EEZ. It is Mount Tropic, an ancient volcano that rises from the seabed, four kilometers deep, to a thousand meters from the surface.

Tropic is about 250 nautical miles southwest of the Archipelago, which means that it remains outside the waters under Spanish sovereignty by just 50 miles. However, the States can extend the control of the maritime space beyond the 200 miles that mark the limit of the EEZ if they demonstrate that the seabed is the natural continuation of the terrestrial surface. “Spain’s argument is that to the west of El Hierro the sea floor has the same volcanic origin as the Archipelago,” explains Vicente Navarro Marchante, professor of Law at the University of La Laguna. If the United Nations accepts the Spanish thesis, as seems more than likely in the opinion of most experts, the country and the Islands would extend their maritime domains up to 350 miles. And that’s where Tropic is included.

But things are even more complex, because Tropic is also inside the maritime space that would correspond to Western Sahara, whose territory is illegitimately occupied by Morocco. In its request to the UN, Spain acknowledges the overlap with a possible extension of the Saharawi continental shelf, which is not Moroccan, which would be resolved through dialogue and which could lead, for example, to co-exploitation of Tropic resources. So Rabat made a move and has unilaterally delimited its waters, considering those of the Sahara as its own. A legal-political entanglement that has as a backdrop a wealth to be confirmed and for the moment useless.

The dinner with which Mohamed VI entertained the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, not only marks the breaking of his fast for the Alaouite monarch, but also seals a reconciliation between two countries called to understand each other due to their many shared interests and which they hope to have definitely left behind one of the worst bilateral crises to date.

The invitation from the King of Morocco would not have been possible had it not been mediated by the letter that Sánchez sent him on March 14 in which the explicit support of the Government was expressed for the autonomy plan for Western Sahara that Rabat presented in 2007 and that now the Government considers as “the most serious, realistic and credible basis” for a solution.

These words, carefully chosen and highly celebrated by Rabat, which now wants other countries like France to emulate, were the culmination of months of efforts to reverse a crisis whose backdrop was precisely the question of the former Spanish colony and the position of the Government about.

The recognition by the United States, with Trump still as president and via Twitter, of the Moroccan nature of Western Sahara on December 10, 2020 gave Rabat wings, which, reaffirmed in its position, launched itself to try to push other countries to follow in the footsteps of the Americans.

That same day, and on the grounds of the pandemic, the bilateral summit that Spain and Morocco were going to hold a week later in Rabat was cancelled. The initial plan was for it to be held in February, but to this day there is still no date, although it could come out of Sánchez’s visit.

The first signs of relaxation were satisfactory. Sánchez and Mohamed greeted each other standing up and then sat down to comment, in Spanish, on how long they had not seen each other since November 2018 (the president’s first and only visit). The head of the Executive transmitted the greetings of Felipe VI and also congratulated Morocco for the good evolution of the pandemic.

Morocco made public a statement in which it is noted that the Moroccan king and the Spanish president have reiterated their willingness to open a new stage based on “mutual respect”, “mutual trust”, “permanent agreement” and “cooperation frank and loyal”. In this sense, they have agreed to “launch concrete actions within the framework of a roadmap that covers all areas of the association, and that integrates all issues of common interest”. These would include political aspects, economic and security. As he explained to the media, the president thinks that this meeting “is going to trigger very positive things”. As a starting point, Spain is satisfied with the inclusion in the letter that the president sent to Mohamed VI of mutual respect for “territorial integrity”.