Why Spain doesn't respond to Morocco: anatomy of a managed asymmetry

1. The right question

The first chapter of this series analysed the Spanish defensive posture facing a cyberwar scenario with a Moroccan vector. The technical conclusion was clear: Spain is formally prepared for conventional attack scenarios, mediocrely prepared for sustained grey zone, and operates in an environment where Morocco has demonstrated real penetration capability up to the core of the State.

What that chapter left pending is the political question every executive audience ends up asking after reading the facts: if the tools exist, why aren't they used?

The easy answer is "servility", "complicity" or "corruption". All three are analytically insufficient. They are moral labels that close the debate before it starts. The serious answer requires separating what any Spanish government would face from what is a specific political choice of the moment.

2. The facts every explanation must fit

May 2021. Morocco infects with Pegasus the device of the Spanish Prime Minister. The same happens with the phones of the Defence Minister, Interior Minister and then Foreign Affairs Minister. The technique is zero-click; the forensic footprint matches Moroccan operations previously documented against critical journalists.

March 2022. Pedro Sánchez sends a letter to Mohammed VI describing the Moroccan autonomy plan over Western Sahara as the "most serious, realistic and credible basis" to resolve the dispute. A 180-degree turn from Spain's historical position.

April 2022. Journalist Ignacio Cembrero publicly exposes the mass espionage. Citizen Lab and Amnesty Tech technically confirm attribution to Morocco. May 2022: CNI director Paz Esteban is dismissed days after admitting before the Congressional Reserved Spending Commission that Morocco spies on Spain.

2022-2026. No Moroccan agent is formally expelled over Pegasus. No European individual sanctions are pushed from Madrid. Bilateral cooperation intensifies. The position on Western Sahara holds. Any explanatory framework must fit all of these facts simultaneously.

3. Structural factors: what any government would face

Geographical asymmetry. Spain is the only European country with a land border with Africa through Ceuta and Melilla, plus a sixteen-kilometre Strait that is the continent's main migratory corridor. Morocco can activate three levers no other European chancellery has to consider: controlled mass migratory pressure (May 2021 was rehearsal, not exception), harassment of the enclaves and pressure on airspace and maritime space.

Operational counterterrorism dependence. The Moroccan DGST has provided information that has dismantled jihadist cells in Spanish territory recurrently since 2004. That cooperation is operational and verifiable. Breaking it has immediate security cost and Morocco knows it.

US cover for Morocco. Trump recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in 2020. Biden did not reverse the decision. Morocco hosts African Lion exercises and is a preferred AFRICOM partner. In July 2024 France explicitly aligned with Rabat on Western Sahara, leaving Spain without significant European company.

Direct economic exposure. CaixaBank via Bank of Africa, Telefónica, Inditex, construction firms bidding for the 2030 World Cup, agri-food companies dependent on preferential agreements. Tens of thousands of jobs linked. Morocco doesn't need formal retaliation to impose costs: it can hinder licences and create selective regulatory friction.

Shared 2030 World Cup. The joint Spain-Portugal-Morocco bid generates diplomatic interdependence until the event. Any severe bilateral crisis automatically becomes a tournament crisis with permanent international visibility.

Weak internal legal framework. The Official Secrets Act still dates from 1968. The Reserved Spending Commission operates behind closed doors and its conclusions rarely produce political consequences. The Executive manages the relationship without effective accountability, reducing the incentive to force policy changes.

4. Political factors: what is choice, not destiny

Cost-benefit calculation of the Sahara pivot. The March 2022 letter obtained real counterparts: reopening of commercial customs in Ceuta and Melilla, reactivation of migratory cooperation, full diplomatic normalisation. For the government it was an exchange. Whether it was advantageous or not is legitimate debate.

Calendar coincidence with Pegasus. Infection in May 2021, Sahara pivot in March 2022, public exposure in April 2022, CNI director dismissal in May 2022. The hypothesis that Morocco extracted material during those ten months that conditioned the decision is plausible and has been raised by serious journalists. It is not proven from open sources, but it has not been refuted either.

Personalisation of Maghreb foreign policy. Decision-making has concentrated in very few hands of the Executive. The traditional Foreign Ministry has had decreasing weight. It is not servility in the literal sense: it is decision-making concentration without counterweights. But it produces similar effects.

Aversion to bilateral noise in governments with parliamentary weakness. A government with a fragile majority has incentive to avoid foreign crises that open political flanks. Morocco reads this precisely and adjusts its pressure accordingly.

Internal informational asymmetry. The Executive knows intelligence data that Parliament, media and public opinion do not. Opacity protects both the good and the bad manager, and the institutional incentive pushes to maintain it.

Institutional inertia and fear of retaliation. Services know Morocco still has operational capability in Spanish territory. The institutional question is not only "what can we do" but "what can they do to us if we act". The longer confrontation is avoided, the greater the information accumulated by Rabat and the higher the future cost.

5. The uncomfortable question

Combining the twelve factors, the image that emerges is not servility but something harder to digest: deliberate risk management where the Executive has calculated, rightly or wrongly, that the cost of confrontation exceeds the cost of concession.

That choice benefits Morocco disproportionately. And it benefits it precisely because it has worked: Rabat has learned that pressure on Madrid produces results, and therefore maintains and refines it.

If Morocco considered its operation against Spain successfully closed, it would stop investing resources. It does not. Active agents remain, technical monitoring continues, offensive capability stays prepared and documented attempts against dissidents on Spanish soil persist.

What is underway is not a closed 2022 episode. It is a structural relationship of informational subordination managed by Rabat with patience. Kompromat, once established, is not spent: it is preserved as a permanent asset.

6. Why breaking it is difficult

Breaking that asymmetry would require a State consensus that does not exist today. Not because of individual servility but because of systemic incapacity to build foreign policy consensus, aggravated by Executive concentration, institutional fear of immediate cost of any rupture, domestic polarisation and absence of long-term strategic culture.

Add a difficult factor: the personal and professional cost for whoever proposes the rupture. In a system with foreign services active in national territory, the politician who pushes hard measures exposes themselves to reputational operations, selective leaks and judicial harassment. Incentive-disuasion operates even before the proposal is formulated.

7. What this means for the professional audience

For executives and boards. Spanish foreign policy toward Morocco will not change significantly in the short term. Institutional cover for companies with Morocco exposure will not be robust in case of bilateral crisis. Operational protection must be assumed by each company: due diligence on Moroccan partners, expat talent management, sensitive information segmentation and contingency plans.

For private security and intelligence professionals. There is a clear and growing market for services the State does not want or cannot offer: independent OSINT analysis on Moroccan actors, protection of executives with personal exposure, corporate counter-espionage training, technical audits against commercial spyware.

For journalists and observers. The space for independent investigation is greater than ever, precisely because official channels are blocked. Every leak about Makhzen wealth in Europe, every documented operation against dissidents on Spanish soil, contributes to altering the balance.

8. Analytical close

Spanish inaction against Morocco is not a mystery. It is a coherent choice with the current state of Spanish politics and the country's geographical position. It has real structural factors any government would face and specific political factors susceptible to change if there were the will.

What is not analytically sustainable is presenting the choice as inevitable. It is not. It is a decision renewed every day by inaction, and every day it is renewed consolidates the asymmetry that justifies it. The trap is perfect: the longer the response is postponed, the greater the future cost and the lower the present will.

The third and final chapter of this series addresses the question this diagnosis leaves open: what concrete, legally and operationally viable measures Spain could apply to reverse the asymmetry without assuming disproportionate costs.