While political rhetoric between Madrid and Rabat has at times reflected tension, the reality on the ground tells a very different story — one of deepening military collaboration. The latest evidence comes from Navantia, a Spanish state-owned company, which continues to progress steadily on the construction of an Avante 1800 Offshore Patrol Vessel for the Royal Moroccan Navy. Despite previous diplomatic strains, the military-industrial relationship between Spain and Morocco not only persists — it flourishes.
This should surprise no one. Spain is not a neutral actor in the Western Sahara conflict. Under international law, it remains the de jure administrative power of Western Sahara — a status that carries specific legal obligations under the United Nations Charter, Resolution 1514 (1960) on decolonization, and Resolution 1541 (1960), which outlines the conditions for the proper decolonization of non-self-governing territories.
Spain could not lawfully transfer sovereignty over Western Sahara to any other state. Its binding obligation, according to international law, was to decolonize the territory through the free and genuine expression of the will of the Sahrawi people, specifically via a referendum on self-determination supervised by the United Nations. Spain has never fulfilled this obligation.
Instead, in 1975, amid political crisis and domestic instability, Spain abandoned the territory and its people, paving the way for Morocco’s brutal military invasion — an act that unleashed decades of occupation, repression, and suffering.
Since then, Spain has continued to act, not as a neutral bystander, but as an accomplice to Morocco’s illegal occupation. Through the supply of military-grade equipment, technology transfers, training programs, and diplomatic support, Spain has helped strengthen Morocco’s grip on Western Sahara. Every vessel built, every system sold, directly empowers an occupying power that has been systematically violating international law, committing war crimes, and repressing the Sahrawi people.
Spain’s military cooperation with Morocco is not a matter of economic pragmatism; it is a deliberate and active participation in an illegal colonial enterprise. Spain is aiding a regime accused of systematic torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, demographic manipulation, and the violent suppression of peaceful dissent — facts consistently documented by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and numerous other international observers.
Worse still, the Spanish public remains largely unaware that they are being made active participants in a conflict that fundamentally violates international law and basic principles of justice and human rights. Spanish tax revenues, Spanish companies, and Spanish institutions are contributing materially to the continuation of an illegal occupation and the daily suffering of a people whose right to freedom remains denied.
This collusion is not merely a historical betrayal; it is an ongoing violation of Spain’s international obligations and of its own democratic principles. The ongoing military-industrial cooperation with Morocco makes Spain complicit in every act of repression, every torture chamber, every political prisoner, every injustice perpetrated in Western Sahara.
The truth must be stated unequivocally: by continuing its support for Morocco’s armed forces, Spain chooses complicity over legality, expediency over morality, and economic gain over human dignity. It perpetuates a colonial injustice that history will neither forget nor forgive.
The international community — and, above all, the Spanish people — must demand that Spain immediately cease all military cooperation with Morocco and assume its full legal responsibility toward the Sahrawi people: to support their right to self-determination, to decolonize Western Sahara, and to ensure freedom and justice for one of the last colonized peoples in the world.
Every day of silence deepens Spain’s complicity. Every day without action prolongs the suffering and injustice inflicted on the Sahrawi people.
