Relations between Morocco and Spain are entering choppier waters than many observers expected just a few years ago. In an analysis published Monday, journalist and international affairs commentator Abdelhadi Mezrari lays out a blunt assessment: Madrid is approaching a crossroads where its next moves could either cement or seriously undermine a strategic partnership carefully built since Spain’s March 2022 recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara.
Mezrari describes two competing currents within Spanish politics. A vocal minority views the 2022 shift as a capitulation and keeps pushing to reverse it. A more pragmatic camp, by contrast, argues for a strategic alliance that acknowledges Morocco’s growing geopolitical weight in the region and beyond.
The analyst identifies several genuine flashpoints. First, a draft Spanish citizenship bill aimed at Sahrawi populations, which he warns could reopen a dispute that UN Security Council Resolution 2797 had helped calm. Second, migration policy, inflamed by a Spanish court ruling in July that allows undocumented migrants who arrive by sea to remain in the country, a decision Mezrari links directly to events in occupied Ceuta in late July.
Ceuta and Melilla remain, in his view, the most combustible part of the dossier. Spanish nationalist voices are demanding a stronger presidential presence in both cities, while pro-unity demonstrations featuring the burning or tearing of Moroccan flags prompted Rabat to recall its ambassador from Madrid after reasserting that both enclaves are occupied territory.
Mezrari also flags Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s planned October visit to Madrid, where a proposed maritime link between Oran and Melilla and a gas pipeline project toward Ceuta could reportedly be discussed, moves he says risk complicating an already delicate regional equation further.
For the analyst, Madrid now faces a genuine choice: safeguard a strategic partnership whose stakes in security, migration, energy and regional stability far outweigh short-term political calculations, or bow to domestic pressure and put those shared interests at risk. Morocco, for its part, has reportedly opted for measured restraint for now, leaving Spain alone to weigh its next steps.
