On March 2 of last year, the Official State Gazette (BOE) published an announcement from the Ministry of Culture to put out to tender works at the La Paz Spanish School in El Aaiún that located, in parentheses, said African city in “Morocco.” Until that moment, according to legal sources, Moroccan sovereignty over the capital of Western Sahara had never been expressly recognized in a provision published in the official gazette. Culture rules out correcting this supposed error.
The controversial turn of the Spanish position in the dispute, which was carried out by President Pedro Sánchez in his letter to King Mohamed VI a year earlier, on March 14, 2022, recognized that the Moroccan autonomy plan was the “most serious, credible and realistic” to resolve the dispute over the former Spanish colony. But it did not go so far as to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over an autonomous territory that the United Nations continues to consider pending decolonization and for which Spain has a special responsibility, in its legal capacity as an administering power.
The location of the Sahrawi capital in the Kingdom of Morocco could have been due to a lapse by the official who wrote the announcement, since it was processed together with those of five other tenders for works in educational centers dependent on Culture in cities, these yes, unequivocally Moroccans: Tetouan, Al Hoceima, Nador, Tangier and Casablanca. It was not, in any case, an isolated lapse, since it was repeated in the announcement informing of the awarding of the works at the La Paz School in El Aaiún, published in the BOE of last August 29.
Nor was it an error by the staff who prepared the official bulletin, since in the act of awarding the work by the contracting table of the Cultural Infrastructure and Equipment Management, an autonomous body dependent on said ministry, dated July 18, 2023, the school is relocated to “El Aaiún (Morocco)”.
The representative of the Polisario Front in Spain, Abdulah Arabi, has sent a letter to the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, in which he expresses his “strong rejection of the improper reference of El Aaiún as a Moroccan city” and urges him to take measures to that “the Spanish Administration does not contribute to hindering the legitimate right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and independence.”
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The International Association of Jurists for Western Sahara (IAJUWS) has gone further, presenting a request for correction of errors to the Urtasun body, based on law 39/2015, which establishes that “public administrations may, at any time, ex officio or at the request of the interested parties, correct any material errors, whether in fact or arithmetic, existing in their actions”; and also in the BOE’s organizational decree, which states that “errors that do not constitute a modification of the meaning of the provisions […]whose rectification is deemed appropriate to avoid possible confusion, will be saved by the respective organizations [en este caso la gerencia de Cultura] urging the reproduction of the text with the appropriate corrections.”
The letter from the association of jurists emphasizes that the BOE “has among its functions that of attesting to the authenticity of the regulations” and that “failure to correct the error would imply, in essence, acceptance by Spain of the annexation of the Western Sahara by Morocco through force.”
What the IAJUWS presented on the 19th in the official registry is not a mere complaint, emphasizes its president, Inés Miranda, but rather the document that formally launches the administrative procedure that gives the Administration a period of three months to address the complaint. demand. “We understand that it has been a mistake, that they will realize that it violates international law and Spanish domestic law and, therefore, they will correct it. Otherwise, we would have no choice but to go to court,” she warns.
Sources from the Ministry of Culture rule out correcting the provision, alleging that “corrections of errors in the BOE are usually made immediately” and, in this case, not only have many months passed, but it is also a measure taken by the previous holder of the portfolio, the socialist Miquel Iceta. However, they add, Urtasun – who in addition to his status as minister combines that of spokesperson for Sumar, a political formation aligned with the Sahrawi cause – has committed to ensuring that this situation will not be repeated and has personally conveyed this to the representative of the Polisario. In this way, the Government avoids publishing in the BOE that El Aaiún is located in Western Sahara, which could generate a diplomatic conflict with Morocco.
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