When Morocco and Spain were to hold their High Level Meeting on February 1 and 2 to move forward on the roadmap signed last April, an Algerian government plane landed at Barajas airport in Madrid. What should we understand from this gesture? Would Spain have it on two counts?
The result of long months of work and cooperation between Morocco and Spain to turn the page on the terrible diplomatic crisis that has poisoned relations between the two Mediterranean neighbours, the High Level Meeting has given new impetus to a exclusive partnership.
The head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez, and a dozen ministers arrived in Rabat for two days of consultations and work to seal this win-win partnership.
About twenty bilateral agreements in various fields have been signed. The details and details concerning each of them are announced as they come.
The importance of having excellent relations with Morocco is essential for Spain, indicated the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, who affirmed Thursday evening, on Spanish national television (TVE) that the Morocco is the number one priority for Spanish foreign relations.
Nevertheless, a shadow has come to obscure this beautiful picture with the landing of an official Algerian plane in Madrid just before the holding of the HLM, while Algeria has “officially” no longer maintained contact with Spain since the announcement of Madrid’s support for Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara.
Algeria suspended the friendship treaty which had linked it to Spain since 2002, and consequently blocked several commercial and banking operations, while not renewing the Maghreb Spain gas pipeline which crossed Morocco.
This trip is strangely reminiscent of the episode of Brahim Ghali, at the origin of the diplomatic crisis between Morocco and Spain, when the leader of the Sahrawi separatist militia of the polisario went secretly and under a false identity in Spain following to an arrangement with Algeria, and without being indicted for the multiple cases that awaited him in Spain.
An oficial plane 🇩🇿 landed in Barajas before the bilateral cumbre;-modelo Gulfstream- procedente de 🇩🇿. Ardoz hasta Bilda…?Estaría Madrid jugando a dos bandas?… pic.twitter.com/IzGRyASUQc
—Yahya Lamin (@yahya_lamin) February 2, 2023
The case is also strangely similar to the plane of the Spanish government this time, which had secretly headed for Algeria last August, having made a round trip between noon and 6 p.m. between the air base of Torrejón de Ardoz in Blida in Algeria.
The plane identified Gulfstream 4SP 7T-VPM and registered in the name of the Algerian government, was tracked by Flightradar.
The aircraft, an official Gulfstream model aircraft, arrived from Algeria, landed in Barajas at 11:10 a.m., and did not return until 1:13 p.m.
This secret flight took place while the agenda of the Moncloa did not provide for any diplomatic meeting. So what was an Algerian government plane doing in Spain just hours before the start of the Spanish-Moroccan bilateral meeting?
This situation leaves room for several questions, namely whether Algeria waited for the ministers and Pedro Sanchez to be in Morocco to go and plot in Spain with the hostile circles in Morocco within the Spanish government, even if this hypothesis is unlikely since ‘no official foreign plane lands like this without a specific agenda discussed and approved in advance between the governments of the two countries.
Two hypotheses remain the most plausible, the first is that Spain is plotting behind Morocco’s back with Algeria, which has come to seek guarantees just before the summit, the second implies that Spain is negotiating on both sides with Algeria and Morocco.
One thing is certain, the new relationship between Rabat and Madrid greatly inconveniences the Algerian authorities who have tried to put pressure on the Iberian country by breaking ties, and imposing gas blackmail so that it has a position in favor of its plan. destabilizer in the Sahara.