Rocks and Hard Places

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Parsley, or perejil, is considered so easy to come by and so indispensable in Spanish kitchens that it is given away. When you buy your fruit and vegetables at the local market a puñado or fist of parsley is usually flourished wordlessly into the shopping bag without your asking. When I first started living here and offered to pay for it, a stallholder admonished, "We don't make a fuss over perejil." Last week, however, the Spanish got both fussy and fisty over a place that got its name from the plant, a tiny island called Perejil — or Leila in Arabic — that lies a short swim off the Moroccan coast. The "capture" of the long-uninhabited outcrop by Morocco and then Spain's sending its navy to retrieve it seems a soft summer story more Waugh than war. London's Daily Telegraph ran a page-wide headline: "Naval might defeats boys' slingshots." But it's not really so funny.

The political waters beneath Perejil are deep and dangerous. If Spain and Morocco can't get along — and recently this has been so in spades — then the wider North Africa region and the European Union probably can't build bridges, psychological and political, across the 13 km of water separating them. That means some of the critical issues for both sides — immigration, the north-south poverty gap, drugs, and nasty colonial hangovers — won't be addressed, let alone resolved.

Spain and Morocco have been, well, on the rocks ever since a brief honeymoon after Mohammed VI replaced his father, the dictatorial Hassan II, in 1999. Spaniards, and many Moroccans, hoped the new young King would be much more open to democracy and negotiation. But since then the two countries have fought over fishing rights (Morocco refusing them to the voracious Spanish trawlers), over illegal immigration (Spain accusing Morocco of doing little to curb the mafias that ship across the Straits a pathetic armada of desperate Africans seeking a new life in Europe), and over the future of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, which Morocco claims. The Moroccans recalled their ambassador from Madrid in October last year; King Juan Carlos, who has been described as "like a big brother" to Mohammed VI, did not attend the young King's wedding amid the Perejil drama. Both nations' foreign ministers adopted the "Who, me?" line.

The Western Sahara is perhaps the biggest barrier, and one which brings up the issue of another rock — Gibraltar. Spain walked out of then Spanish Sahara in 1976, soon after Franco died, leaving Morocco and Mauritania to divvy up the country, rich in phosphate deposits and fishing grounds. The Spanish were in pre-democracy turmoil and washed their hands of the Saharawi people, most of whom now live in vast desert refugee camps across the border in Algeria.

But, perhaps ashamed of their politicians having abandoned the Saharawi to their fate — which was to wage a long guerrilla war against Morocco — the Spanish people have adopted them. In the refugee camps outside the Algerian town of Tindouf you see 4WD vehicles, solar panels, stoves, medical supplies, torch batteries ... all gifts from Spanish fund raisers. Several thousand Saharawi children spend their summer holidays with Spanish families. Each year a "caravan" of trucks travels through Spain collecting goods for the Saharawi: in my village this year we were asked to give toothbrushes, toothpaste and other toiletries. In the southern region of Andalucía, Spaniards even held a mock referendum on Western Saharan independence, highlighting the United Nations' failure to keep this promise. The mock referendum infuriated the Moroccans, and brooding on this insult may have had a lot to do with their flag waving on Perejil.

The canny Moroccans, of course, are aware that right now Spain needs rock problems like a hole in the cabeza. Their Perejil adventure may have been ended by Spain's superior military strength, but it has enabled them to draw the world's attention to the fact that Spain still holds two enclaves on the north African coast, Ceuta and Melilla. So if Gibraltar is inextricably part of Spain, as Madrid claims, how come Ceuta and Melilla — and little Perejil — are not inextricably part of Morocco? Maybe their next idea will be that Rabat and Madrid should have co-sovereignty over Perejil. That would certainly be easier to organize than for Gibraltar: only animals live on Perejil, and goats don't vote, or at least not the four-legged kind.

When the Saharawi kids come to Spain on holidays they get wide-eyed at the sight of the sea, of traffic, television, plates piled high with food, toys. The host families often find they have learned a lot about simpler pleasures, about resilience, dignity in adversity, and the strength of family. At this level at least, Europe has much to offer Africa, and vice versa. The rest, sadly, is the parsley of international diplomacy, which too often crunches down to a shorter word — idiocy.