The President of Algeria warns that relations with Spain are "frozen, but not cancelled"

The President of Algeria, Abdelmayid Tebún, in a government meeting, on February 5 in Algiers. Europa Press

After five months of silence, the President of Algeria, Abadelmayid Tebún, has ruled on relations with Spain to warn that "they are frozen, but not canceled" since the suspension last June of the Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborhood between the two countries .

In an unusual meeting with the Algerian press, the president blamed the Spanish government on Friday night for having taken "a false step" and committed a "hostile act", alluding to the turn taken by President Pedro Sánchez when aligning himself ago a year with the thesis favorable to the autonomy of Western Sahara within Morocco, considering it as the "most serious, realistic and credible".

The Algerian president echoed last September Sánchez's intervention before the UN General Assembly, in which he qualified that Spain defends "a mutually acceptable political solution" within the framework of the United Nations.

He described his words as "a possible return of Spain to the European consensus on the Saharawi question."

A few weeks earlier, the President of the Spanish Government had declared in Germany that he would "love" to be able to travel to Algiers, in an apparent gesture of goodwill.

"There is nothing new" about relations with Spain, he has now specified in a statement in which he highlighted Algeria's progress on the diplomatic level thanks to the stability and strength of its economy, according to the state news agency APS.

Faced with allusions to the government's turn on the Sahara, Tebún was more explicit when stating: “Personally, I am deeply upset by the state of relations with Spain, but Algeria is not at the origin of this crisis […].

The Spanish people, with whom relations are very good, have nothing to do with it, and we have total respect for the King of Spain, and he knows it."

The situation "does not look good," emphasized Tebún, quoted by Efe.

Maghrebi and European diplomatic sources agree that the freezing of bilateral relations is temporary.

Algiers seems to have left them on hold, awaiting the results of the legislative elections scheduled for the coming months and an eventual replacement at the helm of the Government that will bring Spain back to its previous position on the Sahara: the self-determination plan by means of a referendum , which would open the door to independence, designed three decades ago by the United Nations.

"Regarding the rest of the [Spanish] organizations, we continue to work with them," said the head of the North African state.

Algeria has reduced imports from Spain by a third, which have gone from 2,906 million euros in 2019 to 1,010 million in 2022. Algerian exports to Spain, however, grew by almost 85%, rising from 3,851 million three years ago up to 7,105 million last year.

In the midst of the diplomatic crisis with Madrid, Algiers has not interrupted the flow of gas and oil, the price of which has skyrocketed because of the war in Ukraine.

Despite the Spanish claims to Brussels for Algeria to abide by the Association Treaty that it signed with the EU, the veto on the import of Spanish products is in fact maintained as commercial banking operations between the two countries remain blocked.

In his meeting with the press, Tebún also highlighted the strengthening of relations with Italy, which has become the main importer of Algerian gas after having displaced Spain.

"This situation does not please certain European countries, but Algeria is free in its international and economic relations and defends its interests," he stressed.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni traveled to Algiers last month to promote the construction of a new gas pipeline between the two countries, with the aim of ending Italy's energy dependence on Russia.

Algeria supplies natural gas to Spain through the Medgaz gas pipeline, which links directly to the Andalusian coast.

After breaking diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, Algiers stopped sending gas through the Maghreb Gas Pipeline,