Javier Otazu , currently a delegate of the EFE Agency in New York, has lived in Morocco for 16 years in two different stages, during the reign of Hasan II and later that of his son Mohamed VI. In this interview with OKDIARIO, Otazu, author of ‘The Three Checks of the King of Morocco’ (Catarata) makes an X-ray of the «cold war» that currently exists between Morocco and Algeria and how it can affect Spain: «Morocco has a tap with immigration and Spain’s hands are tied ».
Otazu has resided in Madrid, Cairo and Lima, and has traveled a large part of the Arab world and other Muslim countries such as Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. His knowledge of Islam and the Arabic language has allowed him to understand in depth the Maghreb country, in whose first book he called “the strange neighbor”, for being a country still very unknown to the Spanish. The year 2021, especially turbulent in Hispano-Moroccan relations, is the object of study in this his second work on contemporary Morocco, the work that he could not write or publish while he lived there.
The reign of Mohamed VI is characterized this last decade by a constant erosion of freedoms, in an authoritarian drift in which the decisions of the monarch are not discussed in Parliament, in the parties or in the press. Now that relations between Spain and its southern neighbor have experienced one of their worst moments after the massive arrival of immigrants to Ceuta, Otazu describes the reality of the Moroccan court, the intricate geopolitical and diplomatic maneuvers, the episodes of espionage and, in In general, the arbitrariness of a regime that baffles the international scene while it does not suffer the slightest questioning at the domestic level.
And it reveals how the three tricks that Morocco has played for fifty years in its relations with Spain – the Sahara, immigration and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla – have come together in recent events to form the perfect storm.
