- The senator has presented a new initiative after the publication in the Official Gazette of Morocco of the laws in which it expands its maritime borders
- The senator asks Foreign Affairs to clarify the diplomatic actions that he plans to promote with Morocco and within the United Nations
La Gomera, April 2, 2020. The senator for the island of La Gomera, Fabián Chinea, has registered today, in the Upper House, a parliamentary initiative in which he has once again requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to denounce within the United Nations (UN) Morocco's decision to delimit its maritime space with Spain and Mauritania for the first time, and in the process legally incorporate the sea adjacent to Western Sahara into its territorial waters.
The senator has presented this initiative after Morocco published in its Official Gazette this Monday, the 30th, the two laws relating to the extension of its maritime borders. These are regulations 37.17 and 38.17, which had already been approved unanimously by Parliament in January and by the Senate in February.
Morocco assumes as its own the territorial waters (12 nautical miles) along the entire coast of Western Sahara. And, in addition, it delimits its 200 nautical miles of exclusive economic zone and 350 of continental shelf, thereby entering Spain's 200 miles in the Canary Islands and the platform that Spain requested before the UN in 2014.
The senator recalls that "the only way to internationally validate the maritime extensions of Spain and Morocco is to reach a mutual agreement. But to reach that agreement it will be necessary to previously resolve the Western Sahara dispute."
Regarding the 350 nautical miles of the continental shelves, the seabed that is located in that space of the continental shelf that Spain intends, and to which Morocco also aspires, represents a vast potential for the development of economic activities that have not yet been conveniently identified.
In that space are some seamounts, discovered and mapped since 2011, in which significant polymetallic mineral deposits have been found, including tellurium. In particular, ferromanganese crusts with high cobalt content located in the Echo, Paps, Drago, Tropic, Bimbache and Las Hijas mountains.
