The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, was forced to postpone his visit hours before going to Algiers for reasons of Algerian agenda. Albares traveled today to meet his counterpart, Ahmed Attaf, in a meeting with a high political and economic content, because it meant an attempt to recover the good relations that the two countries had before the spring of 2022 Algeria broke the treaty of friendship and cooperation that governed relations, as a result of the change of position of the Spanish Government on the Sahara.
After the change of position was confirmed, which meant recognizing that considering Morocco as an autonomous region was the best option for the Spanish Government, the Algerian Executive, who had already protested and described this attitude as “unjustifiable” and a “violation of legal, moral and political obligations”, as well as “contrary to international legality”, decided to break the agreement of friendship and cooperation, which governed commercial and political exchanges.
Recovering this framework of relations, which guaranteed the exchange between the two countries, was the objective of the trip of the head of Foreign Affairs to Algiers, after the symptoms of a thaw that the Algerian Government wanted to set in motion. The first, with the return of the new Algerian ambassador to Spain, in December, after the Executive of that country had withdrawn him at the beginning of the diplomatic crisis over the Sahara. In addition, in mid-January, Algeria allowed the import of poultry products from Spain, something that had not happened since 2022, when the Algerian Association of Banks and Financial Institutions ordered the blocking of banking operations linked to imports and exports .
The Spanish Government has detected these two years signs of good will on the part of the Algerian Government, such as the fact that it has guaranteed the supply of gas to Spain during the hardest moments of the crisis in Ukraine and Russia, maintaining the contracts that both countries had signed years ago.
Albares, who will travel to Algeria at a date yet to be determined, is looking for the economic exchange that guaranteed the friendship and cooperation agreement to return to what it was two years ago and for the improvement of Spain’s relations with Morocco not be an obstacle to maintaining a profitable link with Algeria.
