Sheltered under a white canvas tent, a group of men and women, with some children, await the arrival of Queen Letizia in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on Wednesday. It is 10 in the morning, the air is thick with suspended dust and the thermometer is already heading for 30 degrees, but there is a great desire to show gratitude to the Spanish cooperation. Especially for this first project that the Queen is going to learn about on the ground, during her 48-hour visit to the North African country. It is a platform for the distribution of subsidized fish for the most vulnerable population. It is one of the most emblematic projects of Spanish development aid in Mauritania and began in 2012, with an initial allocation of 5 million euros, for the creation of the National Fish Distribution Society (SNDP), an organization that since It has been managed by the Mauritanian Government for a few years and it works with a philosophy that can be summed up in one sentence: fish at the price of bread.
Dressed in her red aid worker vest that she will not take off during the entire visit, the Queen arrives at the platform's headquarters in Nouakchott, accompanied by the first lady of Mauritania, Mariam Mint Ahmed. She will be her guide in most of the visits: four projects on this first day, two of them dedicated to fishing, and another two, to equality projects and care for victims of gender violence.
Cooperation is a State policy and the Spanish Government has in Mauritania a key ally in this area of the Sahel, due to its effective control of illegal immigration and in the fight against terrorism, as well as being the most important fishing ground for the Spanish fleet outside the European Union. Representation is at the highest level.
On the fish platform, this Wednesday there was movement early in the morning. Now the fish is already being distributed. From Monday to Thursday, at 9 in the morning, 90 tons of fish arrive daily at the freezers of this industrial warehouse, which will be distributed at a symbolic price among those who need it most: two kilos of fish cost like a loaf of bread. They are species typical of this area of the Atlantic: sea bream, tropical sole, grouper, bonito, pompano. 2% of the total catches in Mauritanian waters by the beneficiary countries of the European Union fishing agreements are allocated to this program. The plan started with an investment of 5 million euros, and has made it possible to create a logistics network for the supply of frozen fish, from the coast to the interior of the country, which today has more than 400 distribution centers. The bulk of the ships arrive at another city on the coast, Nouadibu, and from there they are distributed in freezer trucks. 400,000 people benefit from the program -one in ten Mauritanians-, 70% with family income below 112 euros per month. In addition to improving the food security of the vulnerable population, the success of the project is also measured by social change, since it is improving the fish consumption habits of the population.
"It has changed the lives of many families, because the truck takes the fish to remote areas of the country, which previously could not consume it," explains Chibikh Ould Mboreck, father of 12 children. "The children have gotten used to it and ask us for fish, we are very grateful," adds Fatma mint Mohamed, who is carrying the daughter of her deceased brother, a girl of about 5 or 6 years old, whom she adopted and who now he carries a frozen fish in his hand for photos.
"We are very grateful, but we need more fish, we want to fill the freezers," says Abdallahi, head of distribution for the platform in Nouakchott, with a smile, who assures that fish is being a great help in combating child malnutrition.
“The program has worked very well because the Mauritanian government has appropriated the project. In 2020 they asked the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Aecid) for help to increase distribution, they wanted to go from 8,000 tons to 12,000. Now we work more on the quality of the distribution and on better identifying the beneficiaries”, explains Lierni Galdós, responsible for Cooperation Programs of the Aecid in Mauritania.
The next stop, before lunch, is a visit to the program for the Prevention and Protection of Victims of Gender Violence. The project, endowed with 1.1 million euros, focuses on reinforcing the quality of services and the preparation of justice, police and health personnel in the country to protect and care for victims of gender violence. Based on the Spanish experience, the program has succeeded in establishing a procedure manual in the Ministry of the Interior for assisting victims in police stations. Attention and treatment units have been created in three hospitals and the Ministry of Justice has begun to train judges and lawyers in gender equality.
