The relations between the Polisario and the Spanish Government remain “frozen.”

In March 2022, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, sent a letter to the King of Morocco, Mohamed VI, regarding the Sahara conflict. In this letter, he considered the proposal of regional autonomy for the former Spanish colony as “the most serious, realistic, and credible” solution to the conflict. This stance led to verbal discontent in Algiers, and the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, merely described the Spanish position as “regrettable and shameful.” And nothing more.

However, a few weeks later, the Polisario Front, through an unsigned statement posted on social media, announced that it was suspending its contacts with the Government of Pedro Sánchez. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by José Manuel Albares, downplayed the issue and responded that it “would keep all channels of communication open.”

Three months later, in June 2022, Algeria officially reacted by suspending the Treaty of Friendship signed with Spain in 2002 and freezing all Spanish-Algerian commercial operations, except for the supply of natural gas, which remained operational. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune swore in a press conference that the gas supply would not be affected.

What did this “break in relations” between the Polisario Front and the Spanish Government actually mean? Not much. It was a symbolic gesture, a mere fireworks display, intended for internal use among the Sahrawi population, either in Algeria or in exile, and for the “friends of the Sahara” in the few countries that still recognize the Republic formed by the Polisario Front and based in the Algerian town of Tindouf.

Spain, both before and after March 2022, has been the main supporter of the Sahrawi populations in the Tindouf refugee camps. The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) allocated 8.3 million euros to the Sahrawi camps in 2022; in 2023, the amount almost doubled, exceeding 15 million euros, although according to the Polisario, 3.85 million euros never arrived. In 2024, the aid, still not quantified, has continued to flow.

The Polisario, which angrily claims to have broken relations with the Sánchez government, is the recipient of this aid because it is the one that runs the camps. Without official Spanish aid, the Sahrawi population in Tindouf would die of hunger or contagious diseases.

The peculiarity of the Sahrawi camps in Algeria is that they are administered and managed by the Polisario Front and not by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has not even been allowed to count the actual number of refugees.

Globally, there are more than 114 million refugees or displaced persons. There are numerous refugee camps, mainly in Asia and Africa, some like Kutupalong-Balujali in Bangladesh, where, according to the latest census (2018), 670,000 people lived. All of them are managed by UNHCR and other UN organizations. Only the Tindouf camps are governed by a local armed movement. In Algeria, the presence of UN agencies is minimal. Even so, the Spanish Government continues to deliver its aid to the Polisario, which boasts of having broken its relations with the donor. It receives the aid and continues to act offended.

In addition to official aid, the Spanish Government grants special treatment to Sahrawi refugees. Algerian citizens are required to go through extensive administrative procedures to obtain visas, and when they do, they can come to Spain for vacations or commercial or cultural tourism; Sahrawis from Tindouf come to Spain with Algerian passports and have all the customs facilities to enter through all ports and airports. It was like that before, and it remains so now.

Algerian or Moroccan citizens, as well as those from the European Union who arrive in Spain, can only access health services in very specific cases and in emergencies; Sahrawis with Algerian passports arrive in Spain and are treated in hospitals and health centers almost with the same status as Spaniards or permanent foreign residents.

Foreign citizens who wish to obtain Spanish nationality, except for those from certain countries with preferential agreements, need to meet exhaustive requirements. Sahrawis do not; of the several thousand Sahrawis residing in Spain, more than half have Spanish nationality, acquired through the express route. The leadership of the Polisario, with few exceptions, all have Spanish nationality, including its leader Brahim Ghali, who was at the center of a diplomatic scandal when he was hospitalized in Spain in 2021 with false documents to treat him for severe pneumonia caused by COVID. When he was discharged, he fled without paying the 45,000 euros that the 44 days he was hospitalized in a hospital in La Rioja had cost. Ghali had never resided in Spain for the ten consecutive years required, and his family had no connection with the Spanish colonial services, neither military nor civilian. Nevertheless, he obtained Spanish nationality without any problem.

Only a year after being saved from death in Spain and a month before Pedro Sánchez’s letter to the King of Morocco, in February 2022, Brahim Ghali acknowledged that “it had been a brave gesture by Spain,” that is, by the Spanish Government, the same one he condemned for having promoted a solution to the conflict that has lasted half a century and which has caused suffering for tens of thousands of Sahrawis and their families in the Territory, in Mauritania, in Tindouf, and in the diaspora.

In addition to the direct Spanish aid managed by AECID, the government of Pedro Sánchez provides direct and indirect aid to numerous Spanish associations and NGOs that work and collaborate with the refugee camps.

Furthermore, in addition to official Spanish aid, there is also aid provided by civil society: the thousands of Spanish families who host children during summer vacations, medical professionals, nurses, teachers, and small independent entrepreneurs who regularly travel to Tindouf to provide assistance; food, medicines, and vehicles sent to the camps by associations of friendship with the Sahrawis, and local, regional, and autonomous institutions twinned with the refugee camps. Of the 53 cities and municipalities worldwide that have signed twinning agreements with the camps run by the Polisario, 40 are Spanish, and each year they provide all kinds of aid to the refugees. This aid necessarily has the approval of the government and ends up in the hands of the Polisario leaders.

All this flow of aid from the Spanish government, its appendages, and civil society directed towards Tindouf and the Sahrawi population in general has not been interrupted despite the “break” announced by Brahim Ghali and the cries of “traitors,” “colonialists,” and “disloyal” that are regularly shouted from the ranks of the Sahrawi armed movement.

Pedro Canales.