Direct flights have become from two European capitals to a city in the disputed North Africa region with the last battlefield in the conflict between a rebel group and Morocco.
Low -cost airlines opened roads linking Madrid and Paris with income in Western Sahara, a previous Spanish colony that Morocco has largely controlled, but they are demanding contracts from the Polisario -backed by Algeria.
Questions about the legitimacy of flights have threw their future. Polisario, which controls about 20 percent of the region, threatened legal procedures if European transport companies maintain roads.
For about 20 euros ($ 22), Virginia Santana can now take a three -hour trip every week from Madrid to income, which is located on a sand peninsula flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, where it supervises the construction of a hotel.
“This new road is revolutionary,” the Spanish businesswoman, in her thirties, told AFP at Madrid airport.
With the funding of Spanish investors, its hotel is a symbol of a tourist mutation in the city and the surrounding area, which is led by the Moroccan authorities, whose regional demands have increased.
Morocco controls about 80 percent of Western Sahara, as the United Nations has made a mission to preserve peace since 1991 in what it considers a “vibrant region”.
The United Nations mission aims to prepare a referendum of fate for the region, and is rich in fisheries and phosphate. But Morocco refused to allow the vote in which independence was an option and the confrontation has been frozen.
Spain withdrew from Western Sahara in 1975, but after decades of neutrality, in 2022, it supported Morocco’s proposal to grant the region an independent situation under Moroccan rule. France followed its example in 2024.
With the encouragement of the incentives provided by the Moroccan authorities, Transavia, a company affiliated with Air France-KLM, began the Paris flights while the Irish Airlines for the flight budget began from Madrid.
“The latest contacts that were launched made it possible to double the international ability of an income airport, with about 47,000 seats” in 2024, “Moroccan Tourism Minister Fatima Zahra told AFP.
Legal fraud
The Policario Front opposes flights. The movement’s representative of the United Nations agencies in Geneva, Obi Bochraya, told AFP that the legal procedure was a possibility.
Bochsaya said that the Moroccan authorities want to “impose a clear access to the occupation of Western Sahara by involving economic actors.”
Policario envoy added that any agreement on the region must die by both parties concerned, and airlines “operate outside international law.”
He added that the European Commission in December told the transport companies about the European Union’s Aviation Agreement-which does not apply to the roads that link the lands of a member state of the European Union to the territory of Western Sahara. “
However, the Civil Aviation Authority in Spain argues that ASA that the Chicago Agreement of 1944, which coordinates international air travel, gives it “non -public right” to the national airspace and that it “does not need an external consultation.”
Airlines disguise the rules for breaking the rules
Ryanaire said its operations on the road “are compatible with all applicable flight regulations,” without providing more details.
Tranavia said that all of her flights “were validated by the relevant authorities.” But its operating license, which is seen by Agence France -Presse, permits only the carrier to serve Morocco, which raises the issue of the disputed Western drafting.
The Civil Aviation Authority in France, which was contacted by Agence Agency, which is the Civil Aviation Authority in France, has taken the case to the French Foreign Ministry, which has not responded.
The row on flights follows a dispute over the agreements signed in 2019 between Morocco and the European Union with regard to hunting and agriculture in Western Sahara.
After a long legal battle, the European Union’s Justice Court ruled in favor of the Policario Front last year and the agreements that he said were signed without the approval of the original people in the region.
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
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