What Does the PSOE Owe Morocco?

Tags : Spain, Morocco, PSOE, Pedro Sanchez, Western Sahara, saharawi refugees,

I wonder what all those mayors with red scarves think, all those grassroots socialists who gave their all for the Sahrawis in their towns and traveled to refugee camps to bring solar panels.
— Ana Iris Simón

Agustín Jiménez was the mayor of Noblejas when I was a child, and he always wore a red scarf. When I asked my parents why, they told me it was because he was a socialist. That contradicted a mantra I often heard at home, that “the PSOE was no longer socialist or worker,” to which, years later, I would add that it was not even Spanish anymore, as they long ago accepted that those in charge don’t sleep in La Moncloa, but in Brussels, the City, or Washington. But if my parents said Agustín was a socialist and not “PSOE,” perhaps it was because he truly was.

He was one of those mayors who people said “did a lot for the town,” but not just for his own. He was also in charge of the “Vacations in Peace” project in Noblejas, which allowed many of us to host Sahrawi children. Thanks to Agustín, I shared childhood, a room, and summer games with Fatma and Lehbib, who in September would return to the refugee camps where they were born and where, if no one stops it, their grandchildren will be born too.

Felipe González traveled there in ’76 and told the Sahrawis that “his party would be with them until the end.” Decades later, the president of the most progressive government in the galaxy, who, in his own words, will be remembered for exhuming Franco, laid flowers on the grave of genocidal Hassan II.

A few weeks later, the PSOE stood alone in Congress voting against granting nationality to Sahrawis born under Spanish sovereignty. A few weeks before that, they voted alongside Le Pen in the European Parliament against a resolution calling for freedom of expression in Morocco and denouncing the possible involvement of the Alaouite regime in a bribery scheme to gain influence in European institutions. But that’s not the only thing that smells rotten in Denmark: there’s also former minister María Antonia Trujillo’s statements defending that Ceuta and Melilla are Moroccan, or, above all, the PSOE’s betrayal of the Sahrawis, with concessions first by Zapatero and then by Sánchez regarding their land.

It seems the socialists have suddenly been struck by a bout of realpolitik, the kind they don’t apply to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Apparently, Mohamed VI is not a tyrant, talking about Greater Morocco — which, by the way, would include the autonomous cities and the Canary Islands — is less serious than mentioning Greater Russia, invading the Sahara is not as terrible as invading Ukraine because no one is sending tanks to the Polisario.

PSOE’s stance toward Morocco was summed up by López Aguilar: “You have to swallow frogs if necessary,” he said recently. Even if those frogs include tolerating blackmail, going against the UN, turning a blind eye to the Sultanate’s tortures, congratulating them for killing migrants at the border, or kissing the slippers of their corrupt caliphal caste, the same one that flies our flag upside down.

Listening to the leaders of their party, I wonder what Agustín Jiménez must think, and what all those mayors with red scarves, all those grassroots socialists who gave their all for the Sahrawis in their towns and traveled to refugee camps to bring solar panels, must think. And I also wonder, like so many others: what does the PSOE owe Morocco?
El País, February 18, 2023.

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What Does the PSOE Owe Morocco? (II)
— Ana Iris Simón

In 2016, I traveled to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf. I did it to reunite, almost twenty years later, with Fatma and Lehbib, the children who spent several summers in my house when I was also a child. They came thanks to the « Vacations in Peace » program, which allows hundreds of Spanish families to host Sahrawi children each year.

I brought back a few things from the desert. A poem by Marcos Ana in my head — the one that says, “recite me a horizon / without locks or keys,” a couple of date necklaces, a conversation about God at sunset that moved even me, an atheist at the time, hands painted with henna, a lot of anger, and a drawing made by the girl who, during my stay, became my guide: little Fatma, niece of Fatma and Lehbib. On a sheet torn from a notebook, the girl drew a tent like the one we slept in every night. And over it, two flags: on one side, the Sahrawi; on the other, the Spanish. Below, she wrote her name and mine.

With each betrayal of the PSOE to that brotherly people, I return to that drawing, to the Spanish passport shown to me by an elderly Sahrawi with a Cuban accent (how strange that the terrible dictatorships insist on helping people even poorer than themselves), and to the affection with which everyone in the camps spoke to me about Spain. So, I have returned several times in recent years: when Sánchez laid flowers on Hassan II’s grave, when he sided with Morocco, defying the UN, in the conflict with the Sahrawis, when the PSOE stood alone in Congress voting against granting nationality to Sahrawis born under Spanish sovereignty, or when they voted alongside Le Pen in the European Parliament against a resolution calling for freedom of expression in Morocco.

And just when it seemed they couldn’t sink any lower, when it seemed it was impossible to do worse, they have surprised us again: this time, by denying asylum to more than 40 Sahrawis persecuted by the Moroccan kingdom. They have been in the inadmissibles room at Barajas for over a week, including two children aged one and two, and a sick person. As Ione Belarra highlighted, it is incomprehensible that in a country that has welcomed 210,000 Ukrainians in the last two years, or 40,000 Venezuelans, including Leopoldo López, there is no room for these 40 Sahrawis.

When Fatma came to my house, in the mid-nineties, she was a little older than the two children at Barajas and was ill: she had an eye condition that caused strabismus. As soon as she arrived, my parents took her to an ophthalmologist, who said she needed surgery. After hearing the case, the doctor offered to waive her fee and only charge for the clinic costs. The bill came to 200,000 pesetas, which was eventually paid by the Noblejas City Council in another beautiful gesture of solidarity.

Its mayor, Agustín Jiménez, always wore a red scarf, which, according to my parents when I asked, was “because he was a socialist.” With each betrayal by the PSOE, I also think of him. Of all those voters and activists who, like Agustín, traveled to Tindouf or promoted the hosting of Sahrawi children from their town halls. And I wonder how it is possible that a six-year-old girl who has grown up in a sand prison, two postal workers like my parents, an ophthalmologist, or a small-town mayor understand better what the Spanish mean to the Sahrawis, and vice versa, than the elites of the most progressive government in the galaxy.

El País, September 28, 2024.