The Algerian government requests approval of the new head of its legation in Spain, vacant since March 2022
Algeria has requested the green light to appoint a new ambassador to Spain, thus restoring full diplomatic relations which had been interrupted since it withdrew the former head of its legation in Madrid, Saïd Moussi, on March 19, 2022, government sources confirmed to EL PAÍS. The new Algerian representative in Madrid will be the diplomat Abdelfetah Daghmoum, former Algerian ambassador to Guinea Conakry, who was already named number two at the Algerian embassy in Madrid, according to El Confidencial.
The return of the Algerian ambassador puts an end to a diplomatic crisis of more than 19 months which had as its main consequence the virtual suspension of exports of Spanish products to Algeria, with millions of dollars in losses for companies affected, in sectors such as oil, paper or ceramic products.
The Algerian ambassador’s call for consultations came a day after the Moroccan Royal Palace published the letter that the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, addressed to King Mohammed VI, in which he described the Moroccan project of autonomy for Western Sahara as “the most serious, realistic and credible basis for the resolution of the dispute” over the former Spanish colony. The letter sealed Madrid’s reconciliation with Rabat and allowed the return to the Spanish capital of the Moroccan ambassador, Karima Benyaich, after ten months of absence, which resulted in the entry of more than 10,000 migrants into the situation. irregular in Ceuta in May 2021.
However, the reconciliation with Rabat triggered the immediate opening of a new diplomatic crisis with Algiers, the main ally of the Polisario Front, which considered the about-face of the Spanish government as “a second historic betrayal of Spain towards the Sahrawi people », after the Madrid agreements of 1975, which left the former colony in the hands of Morocco.
In the case of Algeria, it will not be the former ambassador who returns, because Saïd Moussi was appointed in August 2022 as ambassador of his country to France, Algiers has therefore opted for another diplomat familiar with Spanish reality. The Spanish government has already received the mandatory approval request for his appointment, which will be processed quickly, according to the sources consulted, so that his integration into the embassy in Madrid could take place in the short term.
Three months after recalling its ambassador, Algeria suspended the treaty of friendship, good neighborliness and cooperation between the two countries, signed two decades earlier, and blocked financial transactions with Spain, strangling bilateral trade , which prompted the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to request the intervention of the European Commission, responsible for trade relations with third countries.
Although Algeria has fulfilled its commitments in terms of gas supply, through the only gas pipeline still open (the Medgaz, an underwater gas pipeline linking Almeria to Beni Saf), Spain has sought other suppliers and Algerian authorities have favored Italy as their best customer in energy matters, to the detriment of the Iberian Peninsula. They even launched a new project, South2H2, to bring green hydrogen to Germany via the transalpine country and Austria, in competition with H2Med, promoted by the governments of Lisbon, Madrid and Paris. During the period of vacancy of the Algerian embassy, Spanish exports to Algeria have fallen, with declines of up to 45.9% in 2022 (from 1,888 million euros to 1,021 million euros) and by 90% in the first half of this year. In addition, Spanish companies have been excluded from public tenders for works in the Maghreb country and the authorities have suspended the repatriation of immigrants who arrived illegally on the Spanish coast, which, until the crisis is triggered, were sent back by the Ministry of the Interior on the ferry which covers the Alicante-Oran line.
Lately, however, there have been some signs of relaxation, such as the re-establishment of regular Air Algérie flights between Palma de Mallorca and Algiers on October 29, which augured a softening of the Algerian position. This change of attitude denies the thesis according to which Minister Albares had become an obstacle to the normalization of bilateral relations because he had not informed the Algerian authorities in advance of the turn of the Spanish government on the Sahara. The PP’s criticism of this change, and of the way in which it took place, had also raised hopes that a new government chaired by Alberto Núñez Feijóo could retrace the path taken and return to the traditional equidistance between the positions of Algeria and Morocco on the Sahara, a possibility frustrated by the electoral results of 23-J.
Algiers has decided not to wait for the formation of the new government to make a move and fully restore political relations, although it remains to be seen whether these will lead to an immediate normalization of economic relations. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not want to confirm or deny this information and the Algerian embassy in Madrid did not respond to requests from EL PAÍS to give its version either.
