Beni Mellal – Spain’s far-right Vox party suffered a resounding parliamentary defeat on Wednesday after its sweeping 29-measure agricultural motion – targeting Morocco, Mercosur, and the European Green Deal – was rejected by the majority of the Congress of Deputies.
The motion, championed by Vox leader Santiago Abascal’s group, demanded the suspension of EU-Morocco agricultural trade arrangements and Spain’s formal rejection of the EU-Mercosur deal. It also called for an immediate freeze on Spanish public funds financing agri-food projects in Morocco, citing what the party labeled “unfair competition” against Spanish farmers.
Coalición Canaria and Unión del Pueblo Navarro abstained. The rest of parliament voted against.
The Popular Party – the Christian democratic conservative formation that has routinely played to anti-Morocco sentiment for domestic gain – this time stopped short of open confrontation, abstaining rather than backing Vox’s explicit rejection of trade agreements with Morocco and Mercosur, hiding instead behind EU institutional frameworks as a convenient political cover and the proper channel for any trade revision.
The defeat is a humiliating, full-frontal collapse of Vox’s relentless, cynical campaign to sabotage Morocco’s agricultural partnership with Europe – a campaign built not on policy but on xenophobic economic nationalism that found no serious takers in the Spanish legislature.
The motion’s failure carries particular weight given the broader diplomatic context. Just days earlier, on February 9, Spain’s Department of Customs and Special Taxes issued an official notice extending full preferential tariff treatment to products originating from Western Sahara under Moroccan administration – effectively operationalizing the EU-Morocco trade update following the Exchange of Notes signed on October 3, 2025.
Spain’s Agriculture Minister Luis Planas had already dismissed similar parliamentary pushback in November 2025, describing it as “a political campaign” driven by the PP. That earlier European Parliament challenge – requiring 360 votes – fell short by a single vote.
The PP itself, regardless of its Wednesday abstention, has not escaped scrutiny. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares last week publicly excoriated the conservatives in parliament.
Albares accused PP of sending secret envoys to Morocco to back the government’s autonomy plan position while simultaneously criticizing it before domestic audiences. “Stop being hypocritical and ridiculous,” he told PP lawmakers directly.
The foreign minister also cited PP’s efforts to challenge Spain’s friendship treaty with France before the Constitutional Court, and accused the party of attempting to sabotage Spanish foreign policy on multiple fronts.
Meanwhile, Spain’s trade relationship with Morocco reached €21 billion in 2025. The EU-Morocco Association Council meeting on January 29 – co-chaired by EU High Representative Kaja Kallas – produced a 57-point declaration explicitly backing Morocco’s autonomy initiative as the most realistic path to resolving the Western Sahara question, echoing the language of UN Security Council Resolution 2797.
Wednesday’s vote confirms that Vox’s protectionist, anti-Morocco agenda finds no majority in the Spanish legislature. Its proposals – built on trade barriers, funding suspensions, and commercial isolation – ran directly against Spain’s accelerating institutional and commercial alignment with Rabat.
The motion was rejected, the trade framework stands, and Spain’s customs apparatus is already putting it into practice.
