The Maghreb country will thus once again have a head of mission in Spain, after withdrawing it in March 2022
The Government has given approval (plácet) to the proposal Algeria for a new ambassador in Spain, as diplomatic sources have confirmed to this newspaper. The Council of Ministers has included on the agenda an “agreement on the proposal to grant approvals for the head of a foreign mission.” The sending of a new head of mission to Madrid is the first step taken by Algiers towards normalization of diplomatic relations with Spain.
The Government of Abdelmadjid Tebboune decided 19 months ago to withdraw its ambassador, Said Moussi, in retaliation for the support of Pedro Sanchez to Morocco in his plan to keep Western Sahara in exchange for giving autonomy to the disputed territory. Algeria is a rival of Morocco and supports and hosts the Polisario Front, an enemy of Rabat. The diplomat that Algiers will send is Abdelfetah Daghmoum, according to El Confidencial on November 2.
No public explanation, direct or indirect, has been given as to the reasons why the Algerian Government has decided to begin unblocking relations now. A year and a half of relative silence has passed between the parties since, in June 2022, Tebboune ordered the suspension of the Treaty of Friendship between both countries and the freezing of part of trade with Spain.
“I think that the Spanish position on Israel and Palestine, different from that of many European countries, has been very appreciated in Algeria,” he noted in conversation with this newspaper. Yahia H. Zoubir, expert on Algeria and senior researcher at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs in Doha and academic at Fudan University in Shanghai. The Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation is a relevant issue in the internal politics of Algeria.
Pedro Sánchez, unlike his counterparts in Germany, United Kingdom or Francehas not visited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Hamas attack on October 7, which left more than 1,400 dead, and Israel’s subsequent massive bombing of Gaza, which has caused more than 10,000 deaths.
The President of the Spanish Government has aligned himself with the theses defended by the High Representative of EU foreign policy, Josep Borrell, the secretary of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres and the president of the Council, Charles Michelamong others: condemns the Hamas attacks, but also calls for restraint and respect for international law in the Israeli response.
Sánchez at the UN
“In addition, Sánchez’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly [el pasado mes de septiembre] was much more balanced than the one he gave two years before,” says the expert. Sánchez defended before the UN that there be for the Occidental Sahara “a mutually acceptable political solution and within the framework of the United Nations Charter and the resolutions of the Security Council.” He made no mention of the change in Spanish position reflected in the letter, in which the neutrality of the last half century was abandoned to favor one of the solutions (the one advocated by Rabat).
“There were contacts between the two parties in September in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly,” assures the president of the Algerian-Spanish Circle of Commerce and Industry, Djamel Eddin Buabdalá, to the Algerian media ‘Tout sur l’Algérie’, according to Europa Press. According to the aforementioned businessman, then “there was an agreement on a progressive return of relations between Algeria and Spain.”
The United Nations Security Council has also just approved (on October 30) resolution 2602, which extends the mandate of the Mission of the organization in Western Sahara (MINURSO) one more year. It is led by Guterres’ personal envoy, Staffan de Mistura, who was recently able to travel to Morocco and Algeria, in addition to occupied Western Sahara and the refugee camps of Tindouf (Algeria) where the Polisario Front, representative of the Sahrawi people, is located.
The embryonic thaw of relations also occurs a few days before Sánchez is expected to renew his position. If he finally manages to be inaugurated president, Algeria should face a new legislature with the socialist in power.
A loss of more than 1,600 million
The diplomatic crisis between Algiers and Madrid over Western Sahara has caused trade to the Maghreb country to has plummeted to historic lows. This has meant a million-dollar blow to the Spanish trade balance and to many national companies that had one of their largest foreign markets in Algeria.
The Government of Algeria ordered on June 9, 2022 to freeze direct debits for payments of products imported from Spain, in retaliation for the change in position on Western Sahara. The trade boycott has resulted in a collapse of 89% in Spanish exports to the country in one year.
Between June 2022 and June 2023, Spain exported only 205 million euros, compared to the 1,844 million reached in the same period of the preceding years, according to the records of the Spanish Secretary of State for Commerce, which depends on the Ministry of Industry.
The diplomatic clash has caused, Well, a loss of 1,640 million euros in the volume of sales to the Maghreb country in one year. And that in a context in which all Spanish exports have been setting historical highs and are becoming one of the engines of the reactivation of the national economy.
Some companies have organized themselves and are raising property claims. In this context, the Government is preparing a package of compensatory public aid, after having obtained the green light from Brussels, according to El Periódico de España, from the Prensa Ibérica group. When consulted, the Ministry of Industry has not responded at the closing of this article on the validity, amount and application of this aidor whether the diplomatic approach unfreezes import and export operations.
“I think that commercial reasons and pressure from business groups have convinced Sánchez for his new tone, especially after seeing the agreements that the Italians have obtained from the Algerians“says Zoubir.
It remains to be seen how quickly bilateral trade relations between Spain and Algeria are reestablished. For now, on October 30, the flights to Palma from Air Algérie, the state airline. The frequency of Iberia flights between Madrid and Algiers has also been increased and the Vueling flight between Barcelona and Oran has been recovered, Europa Press reports.