According to well-informed sources in the Tindouf camps, the Polisario leaders are at a loss and do not understand the string of setbacks that the separatist front has been suffering, the latest of which being the rejection on Wednesday by the Spanish Senate of a motion calling for recognizing the Sahrawi republic.
The motion, tabled by the party of the “Republican left of Catalonia” (ERC) and supported by Podemos and the National Basque Party (PNV), was easily rejected during the vote thanks to the Popular Party, the Socialist Party and the center-right party Ciudadanos.
The blow is all the harder as it comes from Spain, once a stronghold of the Polisario’s propaganda in Europe.
The Iberian country seemingly does no longer bear the drifts of the separatist front, as the rejection of the motion comes after the decision of the audiencia nacionale, Spain’s special and exceptional High Court, to launch in November 2016, legal proceedings against the Polisario Chief, Brahim Ghali, for torture and crimes against humanity.
Since then, Brahim Ghali carefully avoids going to Spain and cannot even dare set foot in Europe, according to the same sources. What makes matters worse is that the Polisario is now challenged by the Spanish civil society, which was once one of its main supporters.
Today, bitterness prevails in the ranks of the Algeria-backed front that disputes Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara provinces, especially so that the blow coming from Spain took place less than two weeks after their debacle in Addis Ababa.
Actually, at the end of January, the African heads of state gathered in the Ethiopian capital for the African summit supported by an overwhelming majority Morocco’s return to the African Union. In doing so, they triggered the question of the legitimacy of SADR, the pseudo-republic proclaimed in the Sahara by the Polisario and Algeria, which find it difficult to prove the existence of this republic on the ground.
