Imagine the scene: Rabat, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A fifty-year-old diplomat, fluent in four languages and with three decades of service, opens a folder about Spain. He doesn’t need the opening pages: he knows who’s who in Madrid, which minister said what, which government promised another thing, which newspaper will spark a scandal, which businessman will call in a worried tone, how long Brussels will growl, and the exact moment when Spanish politicians will start hurling insults at one another. In Madrid, meanwhile, a minister is sworn in, asks where Morocco is, and requests a two-page report, preferably with graphics and with as little text as possible, because geopolitics makes him anxious.
Although it may be caricatured to excess, it isn’t an exaggeration: Morocco watches Spain with the vigilance of a seasoned cardsharp who has spent a lifetime studying his adversary, while Madrid discovers, time and again, that the opponent knows how to bluff, that he is patient, and that his objectives do not change every time someone refreshes the ministry’s carpet. Morocco trains diplomats the way one raises racehorses, with care and a lineage of craft. Spain has superb professionals, but it treats them with disdain, as if preferring a brother-in-law who plays the tambourine to a Stradivarius violin. We possess excellent Arabists, soldiers, entrepreneurs, historians, journalists, and former public officials who speak languages and read the Maghreb as if it were a newspaper. Yet in Spain the expert is valued only insofar as he confirms what the politician already believes; if he dares to point out that reality is more complex, he becomes an annoyance.
In Rabat they know us with exquisite precision: they understand that Spain is a duck pond, they anticipate when a migration issue will morph into a political crisis, they gauge how Ceuta and Melilla will heat things up, and they measure how keenly the Sahara stings and to whom. There’s no need to imagine scheming Moroccans gobbling couscous; it suffices to rely on craft and common sense. Their governments change, tactics are renewed, but the Strait remains fourteen kilometers wide. More than arrogant foreign ministers, the Hispano-Moroccan diplomacy requires notaries with a good memory. And as far as Spain is concerned, Moroccans are first-rate notaries. As in that owl joke, they fix their gaze intently.
The contrast wounds: with its corruption, cruelties, injustices, and contradictions—even with that monarch who seems far from exemplary—Rabat runs a state that thinks long-term, whereas Madrid only contemplates the next newscast. External priorities there do not change; here they shift by a mere half-point in a poll. Part of the trouble stems from our naiveté: there are still those who see Morocco as a blend of souk, migrant boat, djellaba, and mint tea. And while that postcard ages, they are developing industry, infrastructure, ties to Europe, and a bold, effective foreign policy. They are not unbeatable; they face grave problems and their leaders make mistakes. But Spain owes them extraordinary attention. They understand our rhythms and postures: disunity, noise, a gelatinous pulse, political cowardice. They know how to pressure, when it is wise to wait, how an issue can Europeanize, and when silence speaks louder than twenty statements. They sense us before we step out of the pen and they outmaneuver us on both flanks. Not because they are smarter, but because they do their homework at home while we rehearse our notes on the way to the exam. It’s not hard to imagine who ends up paying for the dinner of fools.
And then comes the surprise: President Sánchez and his ministerial caricatures Albares and Marlaska, clowns of the penultimate act of this farce, are struck by how Morocco defends Moroccan interests. They are startled that Rabat uses the levers at its disposal, leverages European contradictions, remembers what happened five or fifty years ago… They are astonished that, in terms of diplomacy, Morocco behaves like a state. They are like that guy who loses cards every night to the same players and complains that those bastards know his habits. Of course they know them, you fool. They’ve been playing with you all your life.
Meanwhile, what do we have? Ministers who arrive, pose in outfits that resemble naval admirals, and depart without having understood much of anything. A foreign policy without a pulse, convinced that the way to avoid a problem is to ignore it. Governments that do not dare to take firm positions for fear they must defend them, and chronic mediocrity dressed up as prudence, the favorite costume of the carpet-rat faction. What is needed, given the state of affairs, is an effective diplomacy with specialists who endure longer than ministers, people who know history and geography, and a foreign policy that survives governments rather than amateurs who pretend to decipher the Maghreb after two dinners in Rabat. In short, professionals and a sense of honor. Because Morocco—not yet the most powerful, mind you—knows us better than our mediocrity knows it. That is why it remembers when we forget, waits when we hurry, smiles when we stumble, and holds the course while we argue about who should steer. Assuming, of course, that someone actually wields the helm.
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