Morocco's spying on Sánchez and the serious implications it has for Spain

In the last few hours, new information has come to light about the theft of information from Pedro Sánchez's mobile phone by Morocco.

Pedro Sánchez turns a blind eye to the Russian 'shadow fleet' so as not to harm Morocco
Pedro Sánchez, Morocco and Islamism: a relationship that endangers Spain and the EU

Morocco's spying on Sánchez in May 2021

In May 2022, the Spanish government acknowledged that a year earlier, in May 2021, Pedro Sánchez's mobile phone was spied on twice, with a theft of information in which 2.6 GB and 130 MB of data were extracted using the Pegasus cyber-espionage program. In May 2023, a European Union commission identified Morocco as the perpetrator of this espionage. The content of the stolen information remains a mystery, but judging by what happened afterward, it can be deduced that it was highly sensitive information for Sánchez.

Today, The Objective publishes in detail the day and manner in which this information theft occurred, during a visit by Sánchez to Ceuta in which the Prime Minister did not take even the most basic precautions to protect his device (turning it off or putting it in a Faraday bag), despite it being a high-risk area near a country that was carrying out hostile actions against Spain: a major assault on the fence of Ceuta, organized by Morocco as revenge against the Spanish government for allowing the entry into Spain of Brahim Gali, leader of the POLISARIO Front, who was secretly transferred to Spanish territory by the Sánchez government via a military plane that flew from Algiers to the Zaragoza Air Base on April 18, 2021.

Sánchez's concessions to Morocco after that espionage

The Spanish government has never offered any explanation as to what Morocco found on Sánchez's mobile phone. It hasn't even confirmed Moroccan involvement in the data theft, despite the obvious fact that they were aware of it. Nevertheless, we can get an idea of ​​the significance of this information by judging by the serious events that followed this espionage, events that indicate Spain has a prime minister who preferred to be blackmailed by a foreign country rather than resign to avoid harming Spain.

• In March 2022, Sánchez reversed Spain's policy on Western Sahara, a former Spanish province, yielding to Morocco's demands, betraying 46 years of Spanish foreign policy and violating UN Security Council Resolution 690 (1991), which established that the situation of that territory must be resolved through a referendum on self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, which Morocco refuses to hold. This shift by Sánchez provoked a serious crisis with Algeria, which retaliated with a wave of illegal immigration and a drastic increase in the price of gas sold by Algeria to Spain.
• In October 2022, the government dissolved OCON-Sur, an elite unit of the Civil Guard that was very successful in combating drug trafficking in the Campo de Gibraltar region. That incomprehensible decision benefited Morocco, the world's leading producer of hashish and which had legalized cannabis in 2021, from which hashish is derived. That measure left the Civil Guard without sufficient resources to combat drug trafficking, a situation that ultimately led to the murder of two Civil Guards by drug traffickers in February 2024. Sánchez did not even declare official mourning for the murdered officers.
• In April 2023, it was discovered that Morocco was selling Russian oil to Spain, a violation of European sanctions against Russia. The newspaper El Mundo revealed that Sánchez had known the origin of the oil for a month but said nothing and took no action to prevent these imports.
• In February 2024, Sánchez announced that Spain will invest 45 billion euros in Morocco by 2050, an astronomical sum with which the socialist leader commits future governments to his strategy of concessions to that African country. Sánchez made that controversial decision without obtaining in return even a Moroccan commitment to reopen the customs with Ceuta and Melilla and while the government continued to fail to provide the Civil Guard with sufficient resources to combat drug trafficking of Moroccan origin.
• In December 2025, Sánchez announced the signing of fourteen cooperation agreements with Morocco after a closed-door meeting with the Moroccan Prime Minister, without press present and without explanation from the President of the Government of Spain. An unprecedented situation.
• As of today, the Sánchez government is turning a blind eye to Russia's "shadow fleet" so as not to harm Morocco's imports of Russian oil. Besides thereby favoring Vladimir Putin's dictatorship in its war of aggression against Ukraine, this policy implies a high environmental risk for Spain, since this fleet is made up of outdated and unsafe ships, many of them flying no flag or using false flags. Furthermore, Spain is exposed to having its submarine cables cut by Russia, hostile acts that the Kremlin has already carried out against other NATO countries using ships from this "shadow fleet".

The Islamic separatism that Sánchez is promoting and its importance for Morocco

In addition to all of the above, Morocco's influence also appears in Sánchez's controversial decision to regularize hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants through a royal decree without going through Congress. Many of these immigrants are of Moroccan origin. In fact, Morocco is one of the countries most pressuring Spain through the use of illegal immigration, which in the case of that African country reaches levels of hybrid warfare. For years, Morocco has controlled the vast majority of mosques in Ceuta and Melilla, as well as hundreds of mosques in the rest of Spain, a control that the country exercises through its Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

In 2011, the socialist newspaper El País acknowledged that Morocco uses religion to control its immigrants in Spain and that Moroccan authorities hinder the social integration of their citizens in Spanish territory, a strategy about which the National Intelligence Center (CNI) warned, noting that "its objective is to extend its influence and increase control over Moroccan communities using religion as an excuse." Morocco finances mosques and Islamic associations in Spain "in exchange for submitting to the regime's control and adhering to its tenets", the CNI warned.

Thus, Sánchez is paving the way for a new form of separatism in Spain, one that has existed for years in France (Macron described it in 2021 as "a deliberate political and religious project"): an Islamic separatism controlled from Rabat that could seriously influence Spanish domestic politics in the near future. This is a serious problem that Sánchez will leave for those who govern after him, and one that the PSOE could exploit, appealing to its close ties with the Moroccan regime.

---

Photo: La Moncloa. Pedro Sánchez during his visit to Morocco on February 21, 2024.