The Andalusian Gulf

Press, 10 September 1984, Page 20

The Andalusian Gulf

From “The Economist”, London

What country has sumptuous palaces, emirs and sheikhs with their retinues of bodyguards and servants, a deep divide between rich and poor, and — across a narrow seaway — prickly, traditionally fanatical neighbours? Southern Spain, of course. Spaniards are beginning to call the western Mediterranean the “Andalusian Gulf’. Nearly five centuries after their expulsion from Spain, the Moors (as Spaniards describe all north Africans and most Arabs) are on the move again — a source of anxiety and of wealth.

In mid-August, Libya and Morocco concluded a treaty of union which took Spain’s intelligence services by surprise and has worried the armed forces. The treaty includes a mutual-defence clause, and Spanish officers point out that the air forces of Libya and Morocco together outnumber Spain’s by three to one. Although none of the Libyan regime’s five or six previous marriages with its neighbours or near-neighbours survived the honeymoon, many Spaniards fear this latest union could weaken Spain’s hold on Ceuta and Melilla, its two enclaves on the Moroccan coast Emboldened by his new alliance, Morocco’s King Hassan reasserted his claim to the two towns on August 20, when he announced a referendum to ratify the new treaty. Algeria too is being troublesome, although it is at togger-

heads with both Libya and Morocco: it accuses Spain of breaching a natural-gas contract and has suspended repayment on a Spanish loan. The Spanish Government has also been startled this summer by an outbreak of Islamic terrorism. At the end of July, Spain expelled an Iranian diplomat whom it suspected of helping a group of hijackers. A police source told your correspondent that Islamic extremists were using Spain as a base from which to attack western targets. On August’ 5, gunmen opened fire on the car of a Kuwaiti businessman in Marbella, killing his driver. The Islamic Jihad (or Holy War, a shadowy Shia Muslim terrorist group) claimed responsibility for this attack and for the shooting 12 days later of a Palestinian terrorist organiser in Madrid, but the police now think a rival Palestinian group was responsible for the Madrid incident.

Inhibited by its dependence on Arab oil, Spain has tended to be relatively tolerant of Arab-backed political activism. An Andalusian nationalist party and a Spanish anti-nuclear movement are believed to have benefited from Libyan generosity, and the Basque terrorist organisation, Eta, has received Libyan, Palestinian and Algerian help. Yet no Spanish Government has dared protest about this.

On this score Spain has done little to deserve the international

co-operation against terrorism, especially Eta terrorism, that it has often appealed for and is now receiving from both France and Belgium. In the meantime, petrodollars continue to flood into Andalusia, which Arab extremists consider part of the Arab world. Since 1978 Arab rulers and businessmen have invested around $6OO million in the resort of Marbella and along the adjoining coast. Some have built luxurious palaces — one is a reduced replica of the White House — that are staffed and guarded like pocket emirates. Private aircraft are reportedly ready, round the clock, to fly their owners to Spain in the event of a political upheaval in the Middle East. Marbella has its mosque, and Andalusian associations for the promotion of Islamic causes receive Arab subsidies.

In the region’s nightclubs and casinos, however, the influence of Islam is only decor-deep. Andalusia’s new Moors have a weakness both for gambling and for sweet sparkling wines. Barmen and waiters < receive tips of several hundred dollars a throw. Arab extremist movements are said to be paid generously, in Andalusia as in Arabia, for refraining from disturbing the peace of the oil princes’ precarious paradise. A still unresolved problem is: can Iran’s Shia extremists also be bought?; Copyright, “The Economist.”