Algeria has considered overcome the diplomatic crisis caused in 2022 by Spain’s turn in favor of Morocco in the Western Sahara dispute by reactivating the validity of the treaty of friendship, cooperation and good neighborliness, suspended since then. Spain and Algeria have also agreed to strengthen collaboration in energy matters, as announced this Thursday by the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, after meeting in Algiers with President Abdelmayid Tebún, in an official visit that comes to seal the reconciliation between both countries. “Today I can say that the friendship and association between Spain and Algeria are already at a new stage,” he later specified in statements cited by Efe.
Algeria is a “strategic, reliable and constant partner” in gas supply, the Foreign Minister stated in a public appearance, without detailing whether it had been agreed to increase gas supply to Spain. Later, he assured that progress had been made. “We have discussed the gas and energy relationship and we have decided to deepen it, take it further, in an expansion of supply volumes,” he announced, reports the Efe agency. The minister specified that it has been agreed to increase cooperation with investments, “beyond gas and supply”, towards other energies such as green hydrogen and solar energy. There was also a meeting between Albares and the Minister of Hydrocarbons and Mines, Mohamed Arkab. In 2025, for the third consecutive year, Algeria has been the leading supplier of natural gas to Spain, with around 35% of imports.
According to information released last week by the Bloomberg agency, the Government is considering increasing the volume of imports to Spain of natural gas from Algeria by more than 12%, after a 60% price increase since the start of hostilities in the Middle East. The conflict with Iran has disrupted energy markets. The executive president of the Spanish company Naturgy, Francisco Reynés, stated this week that the company wanted to strengthen its relationship with its Algerian supplier and shareholder, the state-owned company Sonatrach, Reuters reports. Naturgy has signed gas supply contracts with Algeria, which in the first two months of the year represented close to 30% of Spain’s gas imports, which arrives through the direct Medgaz gas pipeline, in which Naturgy is a minority partner and Sonatrach has a 51% stake.
Other countries are also asking Algeria for more gas in the face of disruptions caused by the conflict in the Middle East. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, declared on Tuesday during an official visit to Algiers that she is confident of being able to receive greater supply from the Maghreb country, also connected to Italy by a gas pipeline.
With hardly any mention of the Sahrawi conflict
The official trip to the Maghreb country has been marked by the consolidation of bilateral relations and the reinforcement of the supply of natural gas. In his public statement in Algiers, the head of Spanish diplomacy did not mention the increase in irregular immigration from the Algerian coast or the dialogue process on the Sahara launched by the US last month in Madrid with Algerian participation.
The Spanish minister later pointed out in statements reported by TVE that the Western Sahara dispute had indeed been mentioned “on a couple of occasions” by his Algerian interlocutors “to talk a little about the situation in which the process in this regard finds itself.” “We have not gone into depth,” added Albares, without going into assessing the conversations that the United States is sponsoring. “They are negotiations between the parties and, therefore, it is up to them to decide,” he settled the issue.
The foreign ministers of Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania and the head of diplomacy of the Polisario Front met last February at the US embassy in Madrid convened by the Government of Washington and under the sponsorship of the United Nations. Albares then received several of those attending the dialogue on the future of Western Sahara promoted by the United States, including his counterpart from Algeria.
Boats to the Balearic Islands
Entries of irregular migrants to the Spanish borders by sea and land decreased by 42.6% last year, the largest reduction since 2019. Only the Balearic Islands broke this trend with a 24.5% increase in arrivals, the vast majority in boats from the Algerian coast. Albares finally admitted in statements to various media that he had spoken with his interlocutors about the fight against irregular immigration, in which “joint work is already bearing fruit,” although he acknowledged that the route that goes from Algeria to the Balearic Islands “still needs more work and greater reinforcement.”
The minister concluded that it has also been agreed with Algeria to “relaunch trips, visits and meetings at all levels”, without specifying an eventual high-level meeting between both governments, which would be the first since 2018. Albares and his Algerian counterpart, Ahmed Attaf, reviewed the bilateral agenda on Thursday in Algiers and addressed the international situation. Both ministers analyzed the situation in the Middle East, in the Sahel region and in the Mediterranean.
The head of Spanish diplomacy also highlighted in Algiers “the spectacular increase in exports in the last two years.” In 2025, Spain exported to Algeria worth 2,133 million euros, which represented an increase of 270% compared to 2024.” In 2024, Algeria lifted the trade restrictions that it had imposed on Spain in June 2022 due to the Government’s support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the Sahara. Spanish exports to the Algerian market plummeted in 2023, after falling to only 351 million from 2,906 million in 2019, before the pandemic.
In addition to the political and economic dimension, the trip has had a “human and cultural” component. On Friday, Albares presided over the official inauguration of the Cervantes Institute in Oran, the second in the country, after that of the capital. Some 40,000 Algerian students study the Spanish language in the country’s formal education (primary and secondary) and some 3,500 in university education. The minister concluded the visit with an act of historical and democratic memory of the Republican exile in front of the monolith dedicated to the merchant in the same city. Standbrook. This British ship carried out one of the last evacuations of refugees from the Republic from the port of Alicante to that of Oran a few days before the end of the Spanish civil war.
