Assahafa.com
Following a meeting in Madrid on Monday with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares characterized the relationship between Spain and Morocco as “one of the most powerful in the world.”
The bilateral encounter occurred amid ongoing Western Sahara talks in the Spanish capital, where Morocco, Mauritania, the Polisario Front, and Algeria convened in yet another attempt to unlock a conflict that has been artificially sustained for decades.
Facilitated by senior US officials and UN representatives, the discussions once again exposed the central contradiction of the process: Algeria’s insistence on masquerading as a neutral “observer,” while remaining the conflict’s principal architect, financier, and diplomatic shield.
This performative distancing – designed to preserve face rather than advance peace – has become one of the dispute’s most enduring obstacles, ensuring that resolution remains perpetually deferred rather than politically confronted.
“The bilateral relationship between Spain and Morocco is one of the most powerful in the world. Our friendship and cooperation are experiencing their best historical moment,” Albares declared Tuesday on social media platform X. “Today in Madrid with my good friend Nasser Bourita, I confirm our solid, strategic relationships full of future.”
The Spanish minister detailed the exceptional commercial exchanges between both Mediterranean shores, quantifying bilateral trade at €21 billion in 2025.
He noted that migration management and police cooperation “contribute to the security and stability of our citizens,” while Spain maintains “the densest network of public institutions and Cervantes Institutes worldwide” in Morocco.
Albares referenced the comprehensive agreements reached during December’s 13th High-Level Meeting between Morocco and Spain. The meeting, which was held in Madrid, resulted in the signing of 14 non-normative international agreements covering tax, judicial cooperation, digital regulation, agriculture, sports, and education.
“We walk together toward the 2030 World Cup that we co-organize,” he added, referring to the joint hosting arrangement with Portugal.
The Madrid talks were designed not as another ceremonial round, but as a corrective to decades of diplomatic obstruction surrounding Western Sahara.
The US Mission to the UN confirmed on Tuesday that senior US and UN delegations convened discussions in Madrid, bringing together Morocco, Algeria, the Polisario Front, and Mauritania to force momentum on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2797 on Western Sahara.
The resolution, adopted on October 31, 2025, represents the first maximum-level UN endorsement of Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as the foundation for a negotiated solution.
UN Envoy Staffan de Mistura is reportedly attending the meeting, alongside Massad Boulos, a senior adviser to the US president, and Michael Waltz, the US representative to the UN.
Washington has explicitly pressed all parties – Algeria included – to abandon procedural evasions and engage seriously in this new round of talks, signaling growing international impatience with strategies that prolong the dispute through delay, denial, and manufactured ambiguity.
Algeria’s military leadership remains trapped in Cold War proxy politics
According to diplomatic sources cited by Iberian outlets such as El Confidencial and El País, preliminary technical discussions were held in Madrid on Sunday under strict confidentiality. However, much of what has circulated since remains speculative, with no official confirmation regarding the substance or final outcomes of these talks.
The ruling military establishment in Algeria operates within a sealed revolutionary imaginary that has outlived both its social base and its historical purpose. Devoid of renewal, it reproduces authority through fear, the externalization of blame, and the ritualized invocation of anti-colonial legitimacy.
This is a regime whose power is not exercised to build a future, but to endlessly rehearse an inherited narrative – one whose sole remaining function is domination through inertia. As one senior US lawmaker bluntly put it, Algeria is “better off with a strong relationship with the US” – a tacit admission that the current model has reached strategic and economic exhaustion.
That diagnosis was made explicit on Tuesday when US Congressman Joe Wilson publicly challenged the foundations of Algeria’s regional posture. Thanking President Trump and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff for efforts aimed at encouraging “peace between Morocco and Algeria,” Wilson framed the impasse not as inevitable, but as politically engineered.
He warned that Algeria’s continued sponsorship of the Polisario – described as “communist terrorists” seeking to impose “a Marxist state in the desert” – is not a liberation project, but an anachronism that actively destabilizes the region. For Wilson, there is “no way for Algeria” forward except abandoning this obsolete proxy logic and supporting “the just solution of autonomy for the Sahrawi people.”
Taken together, the critique and the warning converge on the same conclusion: Algeria’s military elite remains trapped in a 1970s worldview, mistaking ideological nostalgia for strategy. The result is a state that governs like an archive – recycling revolutionary slogans while forfeiting economic opportunity, regional credibility, and the very future it claims to defend.
Spain formally endorsed Morocco’s autonomy proposal in March 2022, with the Sánchez government considering it the “most serious, realistic, and credible” option for resolving the Saharawi dispute.
Morocco presented this Autonomy Plan to the UN in 2007, subsequently gaining support from over one hundred countries, including major powers like the US, France, and the UK.
The weekend preceded Monday’s meeting with preparatory encounters between Albares and regional counterparts.
On Saturday, he received Mauritanian Foreign Minister Mohamed Salem Uld Merzug and met with Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf, describing Algeria as a “strategic, reliable, and constant” partner while noting Spanish exports to Algeria grew 190% in 2025 following 141% growth in 2024.
The top diplomat also stated on X that de Mistura has Spain’s “full support” in his efforts, adding that he conveyed this directly during their meeting in Madrid.
Source: Morocco word news
