The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has been forced to postpone his visit hours before traveling to Algiers for reasons of the Algerian agenda. Albares was traveling today to meet with his counterpart Ahmed Attaf in a meeting with high political and economic content, since it represented an attempt to recover the good relations that both countries maintained before Algeria broke the friendship treaty in the spring of 2022 and cooperation that governed those relations as a result of the change in the Spanish government's position on the Sahara.
After confirming this change in position, which meant recognizing that the consideration of an autonomous region of Morocco was the best option for the Spanish Government, the Algerian Executive, which had already protested and had described this position as “unjustifiable” and a “violation of legal, moral and political obligations”, in addition to being “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 exchange between both countries, was the objective of the Foreign Minister's trip to Algiers, after the symptoms of thaw that the Algerian government wanted to launch. 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first, with the return of the new Algerian ambassador to Spain, in December, after the executive of that country had withdrawn him at the beginning of the diplomatic crisis over the Sahara. Furthermore, in mid-January, Algeria allowed the import of poultry products from Spain, which had not happened since 2022, when the Algerian Association of Banks and Financial Institutions ordered to block banking operations linked to imports and exports.
In these two years, the Spanish Government has detected symptoms 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 toughest moments of the crisis in Ukraine and Russia, maintaining the contracts that since Both countries had signed for years.
Albares, who will travel to Algeria on a date yet to be determined, seeks to ensure that the economic exchange guaranteed by the friendship and cooperation agreement returns to what it was two years ago and that the improvement of Spain's relations with Morocco is not an obstacle for maintain a profitable link with Algeria.
