The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will visit Morocco next week in what will be his first official trip of the new legislature.
According to diplomatic sources, the minister will be in Rabat on Thursday and plans to meet in the Moroccan capital with the Moroccan Foreign Minister, Naser Burita.
In addition to Morocco, the agenda of Albares' trip, which has yet to be finalized, could include the countries of Mauritania and Senegal, from where many boats depart with migrants heading to the Canary Islands.
Albares' visit occurs at a time of special harmony in relations between Spain and Morocco, after in March 2022 Madrid changed its policy towards the territory of Western Sahara, controlled by Rabat, in defense of the autonomy proposal presented. before the UN for the Maghreb country.
Shortly after this support, which occurred after a bilateral crisis of almost a year, Sánchez visited Morocco and signed with King Mohamed VI a roadmap with several points, but the application of some of them has not yet been completed.
One of the most controversial is the establishment of customs on Morocco's borders with Ceuta and Melilla, an aspect on which Albares stated last June that steps were being taken, justifying the delay in that they are "a complex mechanism."
"Since 2018 there has not been a customs office in operation in Melilla and never in history has there been a customs office in Ceuta," said the Foreign Minister.
Other controversial aspects of this roadmap, such as control of the airspace of Western Sahara or the delimitation of territorial waters with the Canary Islands, remain on hold or are in negotiation processes surrounded by great discretion.
Since Sánchez's express support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara, Albares has visited Morocco on several occasions, the last within the framework of the bilateral summit held last February in Rabat headed by the head of the Spanish Government.
At that summit, 19 memoranda of understanding were signed on issues such as educational cooperation, business cooperation, investment promotion, water, Spanish language teaching, tourism or "green cooperation."
