A Sahrawi association based in Bilbao, Spain, composed largely of former members of the Polisario Front, has requested the mediation of Spanish authorities to secure a meeting with UN envoy Staffan de Mistura during his current tour of the region, ahead of the Security Council’s session on Western Sahara at the end of October.
The initiative, according to association members, seeks to highlight what they describe as growing support within the Tindouf camps for Morocco’s autonomy plan, a position they say the Polisario leadership and its Algerian backers are determined to suppress.
Spanish authorities have reportedly accepted the request, paving the way for a meeting between the group and the UN envoy. The association has collected video testimonies and signatures from Sahrawis in the camps, stressing that many residents, after decades of hardship and isolation, are ready to endorse Morocco’s autonomy framework as the only viable path toward stability and dignity.
Sahrawi sources cited by the association confirm that demands for an alternative future are mounting inside the camps.
The initiative has triggered pushback from the Polisario, which has urged its sympathizers in Spain’s Basque Country to mobilize against the Bilbao-based association.
According to a Sahrawi source, a sit-in is planned outside the Moroccan consulate in Bilbao on Saturday, September 20, in an effort to pressure Spanish authorities and counter the dissident voices.
The Bilbao group argues that current generations of Sahrawis do not wish to prolong a conflict that has entered its fiftieth year.
They insist that Morocco’s autonomy plan, increasingly described by international actors as realistic and credible, represents the only framework capable of ensuring peace, stability and a future for those confined in the Tindouf camps.
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