Issues related to the delimitation of the Atlantic maritime borders between Morocco and Spain have pushed Canary Islands' pro-independence groups to consider breaking away from Spain. These demands date back to the Franco era. Separatists in the Canary Islands have slammed Morocco and Spain over the delimitation of the Atlantic maritime borders, referring to Rabat and Madrid as «colonial powers». Ahora Canarias, a left-wing and Canarian separatist electoral alliance founded in February 2019, condemned the adoption of two bills, establishing Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara territorial waters. The Foreign Affairs Committee at the Moroccan House of Representatives passed the two bills on December 16. Spain was also targeted by the left-wing coalition, which claimed in a press release, Tuesday, that «the famous Moroccan invasion, so often announced and brandished as a scarecrow against the separatists, occurred without the Spanish state agreeing to protect us from it». A Moroccan decision divides the political scene in the Canary Islands Distancing themselves from the moderate calls of the Canarian Coalition, a Canarian nationalist conservative political party, Canarian separatists believe that «the protection» of the archipelago «and the delimitation» of its maritime borders must go hand in hand with «the declaration of full sovereignty and independence» of the islands. «It is obvious that it is within the framework of independence that the archipelago could speak of Canarian maritime borders and of the creation of an inclusive economic zone to protect and manage the resources of a sea which, could be named, the Canary Sea». Ahora Canarias The coalition claims that the territory is the big loser of the «expansionist» projects carried out by Morocco and Spain. It recalls that the two countries had ignored the numerous warnings by the authorities of Tenerife against the launching of offshore oil prospecting. In 2013, Madrid authorized Spanish oil company Repsol to conduct drilling operations in the waters of the archipelago. In 2018, it was Rabat's turn to give the green light to Italy's ENI in its territorial waters located between Tan-Tan and Sidi Ifni, near the Islands. Long ignored in the agendas of official meetings between the representatives of the two countries, the delimitation of the Atlantic maritime borders had been examined for the first time during the 7th high-level meeting Morocco-Spain, hosted on September 29, 2005 in Seville and chaired by Driss Jettou and José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. However, Madrid had requested UN intervention on May 11, 2009. Morocco did the same thing in 2015. The reaction of «Ahora Canarias» is just a glimpse of the controversy that this topic could result in within the political scene in the Canary Islands, especially among right and left-wing parties.
