Algiers (EFE) hostile” and the “false step”, in reference to the change of position of the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, on Western Sahara.
Relations “do not look good” and Algeria is not responsible for this suspension, declared the president in a televised interview, in which he exonerated the Spanish people, with whom the connections are “very good”, while showing “a total respect for the king of Spain”, Felipe VI.
Tebboune praised the strengthening of relations with Italy, a situation that “does not please certain European countries,” he said, and defended that Algeria “is free in its international and economic relations and defends its interests without harming the interests of other countries.”
In this sense, and after the energy agreements recently signed with members of the European Union, such as Italy, today its main partner, the Algerian president considered that his country is on the way to “recover its diplomatic brilliance thanks to the stability and solidity of the economy ”.
Algeria has become Italy’s main gas supplier and the European Union’s third largest, to the detriment of Spain, which until last year, before the diplomatic chill, was its main partner.
Next March will mark one year since the new change of position of the Spanish Government with respect to its former colony came to light, when defending the Moroccan sovereignty proposal over Western Sahara.
The next day, on March 19, 2022, Algeria withdrew its ambassador and in June suspended the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighbor and Cooperation with Spain, signed in 2002, and froze commercial transactions between the two countries, with the exception of existing gas contracts.
Since then, there has been no diplomatic rapprochement between the two neighboring countries and last night Tebboune hinted that there are no prospects for reconciliation in the short term.
