Spanish Parliament confirms Government’s position on Sahara; preeminence of Autonomy Plan

The Spanish parliament has just confirmed the position of the Sanchez government in favor of the autonomy plan for the settlement of the Sahara conflict, by rejecting by an overwhelming majority a draft resolution hostile to Morocco, presented by some small independentist parties.

Spain’s Congress of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, confirmed, Thursday evening, the position of the government of Pedro Sanchez on the Moroccan Sahara issue, corroborating thus the broad support for the Morocco-proposed autonomy proposal within Spanish constitutional institutions and main political formations.

By rejecting by 252 votes out of 333 the draft text asking the Spanish government to review its position on the Sahara, the Spanish Parliament evidenced its clear and decisive support to the approach taken by the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez.

Sanchez stressed last March in a message to King Mohammed VI that his country “considers the Moroccan autonomy initiative as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for resolving the dispute” over the Sahara.

A major fact about the Thursday vote is that the two main political formations in Spain representing the majority (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party-PSOE) and the opposition (Popular Party-PP) voted against the text of the resolution. The text was approved only by the deputies of the Catalan republican left and the Basque separatists of Bildu, extremist formations that have little impact on political life.

With the rejection of this motion by the Spanish Parliament, the government of Pedro Sanchez comes out “more consolidated and stronger” in its recent position on the Sahara and its irreversible support for the autonomy plan, now considered as the one and only solution to put a definitive end to this conflict, artificially created by the Algerian military regime.

This new slap in the face to the separatists’ supporters has once again put things in their right place and strengthened the position of the Spanish government, which had recognized, in the message addressed to the King, ”the importance of the Sahara issue for Morocco,” while emphasizing the Kingdom’s “serious and credible efforts within the framework of the United Nations to find a mutually acceptable solution” to the dispute.

The position adopted by the Spanish Congress of Deputies enshrines support for Morocco’s full sovereignty over its southern provinces and for its serious efforts to resolve the dispute over the Sahara.

This new debacle has definitively confirmed the bankruptcy of the theses supported by the separatists, which are echoed by a tiny minority, pursuing spurious electoral interests, and shattered the hopes of the separatists and their few supporters.

The text is a further blow to the increasingly isolated polisario separatists, who are in a catatonic and desperate state in Spain.

Despite the vile maneuvers and indecent acts of the polisario and Algeria, the Spanish government has not stopped defending the relevance and the validity of its decision regarding the Moroccan Sahara, which is the result of a “reflection and evaluation of the whole situation.”

The statements and the unambiguous positions of Spanish officials, supporting the Moroccanness of the Sahara, further dismay the separatists, who see support for them in Spain dwindle daily. At the same time, the autonomy initiative under Morocco’s sovereignty has emerged as the one and only solution to this regional dispute.