Algeria has formally closed out a four-year diplomatic rupture with Spain, hosting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Algiers but without securing any shift in Madrid’s position on the regional dispute over the Sahara territory, the very issue that triggered the freeze in 2022.
Sanchez made a brief stopover in the Algerian capital while traveling back from New York, meeting President Tebboune before returning to Madrid the same day to welcome home Spain’s newly crowned World Cup-winning football team.
The two sides announced the opening of what they called a new phase in bilateral relations, but without signing any concrete deals.
The visit brings a formal end to a rift that began in March 2022, when Spain publicly backed Morocco’s autonomy plan for the Sahara as the basis for resolving the decades-old territorial dispute.
Algeria, which has created and continues to back the Polisario separatists nurturing a chimera of an independent state in southern Morocco, reacted with inflated confidence believing it could lead to a volt-face in Spain’s position by weaponizing migration, disrupting trade and waving the card of gas. All in vain.
Back then, Algiers escalated withdrawing its ambassador from Madrid and suspending a bilateral friendship treaty, while Algerian state media spent the following years targeting Sanchez personally over the position, which has become that of the Spanish state.
Energy featured heavily in the visit. Spanish officials announced a political agreement to boost imports of Algerian gas, without specifying volumes or a timeline. This takes place amid reports pointing to Algeria’s incapacity to increase exports, given the surge in domestic consumption and ageing fields.
Algerian investigative journalist Abdou Semmar, writing after the visit, argued Algeria’s four-year campaign of economic pressure and rhetorical attacks against Sanchez had achieved nothing, framing the Algiers reception as a reversal of fortune for the Spanish leader.
Spanish and Moroccan commentary broadly converged on the same reading. The normalization reflects Algeria stepping back from confrontation rather than any concession from Madrid, which continues to regard Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the most credible basis for resolving the Sahara issue, Algeria and its Polisario proxies without a diplomatic win from the reconciliation.
