"We do not want aid, we want to fish": the fear of the Spanish fleet for the break with Rabat

On July 17, the beaches of the coast of Cádiz will be bursting. El Palmar, Zahara, Tarifa, Los Caños or Bolonia are names that resonate in the vacation plans of half of Spain. Barbate is not that renowned, but it does have a flagship fishing port where the tuna arrive, which is then eaten at the beach bars on the neighboring beaches at the price of gold.. But not only tuna arrive at Barbate. Anchovies and sardines also arrive. And some come from Moroccan and Saharawi waters, where Spanish (and EU) boats fish thanks to an agreement between Brussels and Rabat that expires on July 17 and whose end has the 98 Spanish boats that have the green light on alert to fish on the other side of the Strait thanks to that entente.

This is not the first time that the end of the fisheries agreement between the European Union and Morocco puts the sector at risk in Canary Islands, Andalusian and Galician ports. When the current agreement was signed in 2013, the Moroccan fishing ground had been closed to European boats for a year and a half. Tomás Pacheco, president of the Barbateña Association of Fishing Entrepreneurs and owner of a vessel that has fished in the waters of the neighboring country in the last two decades, knows it well.. “It is an alternative to the fishing ground in the Gulf of Cádiz,” explains the Barbateño, who says that there are 22 boats from the town of Cádiz that can work in the waters that are part of the agreement, although in recent times they have been going between 7 and 8.

On July 17 they will almost certainly have to return if one takes into account that Brussels is not currently negotiating an extension or the signing of a new fishing pact with Rabat. This is so because the EU Court of Justice ruled that the agreement approved in 2019 was illegal because it included the waters of Western Sahara. And according to community justice, Morocco has no power over the former Spanish colony. The Commission and the member states appealed the decision, but the resolution is not expected until the beginning of next year. “If it comes out in line with the CJEU, we can forget about it,” acknowledges Javier Garat, general secretary of Cepesca, the Spanish Fisheries Confederation, and Europêche, the European employers' association in the industry.

This man from Sanlúcar paints an uncertain panorama. “There will be those who can continue fishing in the Gulf of Cádiz”, adventure. A possibility that is corroborated by Tomás Pacheco, from Barbat, who estimates the number of workers who may be affected only in their locality at 350. The intermediate solution is to activate a series of aids for temporary cessation of the activity, which according to Garat must come from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Luis Planas, has called for an extension of the agreement which, for the moment, seems a long way off.

The MEP of the PP Gabriel Mato, responsible for fishing in his party, abounds in this idea, who details that the aid can only be given if it is considered that the agreement has been broken by force majeure. “We understand that it has been like this,” explains the popular leader, who defends that the impossibility of extending the agreement due to the CJEU ruling is within that casuistry. And in the event that this is not the case, it demands that the central government “not be stingy” and activate support mechanisms for fishermen.

“We don't want help, what we want is to fish,” says Pacheco. This fisherman admits that “if they come, they will be welcome given the bad conditions and the charges we carry”. It refers to the consequence of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the effect it caused on the rise in the diesel oil with which the ships move. Javier Garat adds a more distant memory, the two years of the pandemic in which it was not possible to fish in the area. But now, “with the lower fuel, the Spanish fishing boats were going back to using it,” adds the head of Cepesca.

“It is always necessary, the more possibilities there are to fish, the more options there are,” defends Garat, who adds a relevant nuance. Despite the fact that Spain has the most licenses —93 out of 138— most of the catches are made by large Dutch and Polish fishing vessels in search of anchovies and herring.. In the Spanish case, the distribution is 22 purse seiners, 25 bottom longliners of artisanal fishing in the north; and 10 artisanal fishing vessels, 12 demersal fishing vessels and 23 tuna pole-and-line vessels in the south. The products, in addition to the anchovy and sardines that the people of Cádiz catch, also include hake and pomfret.

The counterpart for Rabat of these permits consists of an income of 50 million euros. “It is the agreement that brings them the most money”, reveals Javier Garat, who details that the funds go to improve port infrastructures and training, among other purposes. But the president of Cepesca aims to be symbolic. “It is a neighboring country, our border with Africa and Strategic in the fight against terrorism… I do not know to what extent these types of issues can be affected by the absence of an agreement,” he ditch.

“Fishermen are also vulnerable and need protection,” says Gabriel Mato, who is critical of certain decisions by the European commissioner for the industry, who, in addition to fishing, also has the environment.. The person in charge of this portfolio is Virginijus Sinkevicius, the same one who has the Junta de Andalucía in check for the irrigation law in the area of Doñana. And Mato's bet is that in the next college of commissioners his powers will be in agriculture to avoid “dictations against the fishing sector” after at times like the pandemic the fishermen made an effort to continue bringing fish to the markets.