Dr. Pablo-Ignacio de Dalmases
Pablo-Ignacio de Dalmases, journalist, writer, and renowned specialist on Western Sahara, as well as a Numerary Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), presents his new work “Western Sahara. The Colony Spain Never Decolonized” (Almuzara), a book that offers a detailed analysis of the contemporary history of this region and explores the roots of the conflict that led to its occupation by Morocco—an occupation now endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, which has accepted the plan for partial autonomy and the sovereignty exercised by Casablanca after the Spanish Government also abandoned the historic UN plan for decolonization through a referendum among the Sahrawi people.
“For nearly a century, Spain exercised its sovereignty over Western Sahara with the consent of the local population. When, in the 1970s, a referendum for self-determination was scheduled, Morocco—intent on annexing the territory—prevented it, threatening a civil invasion at a time when Franco was terminally ill. The government led by Carlos Arias Navarro lost its nerve and agreed to hand Western Sahara over to Morocco and Mauritania, betraying the commitments it had made to the Sahrawi people and to the UN. The result was a war between the Polisario Front and the new occupiers, which ended with Mauritania’s defeat, the enclosure of the area occupied by Morocco with a frontier over 2,000 kilometers long, and the condemnation of the Sahrawis to live in exile or under an occupation regime,” explains the author during the book’s presentation.
In this work, De Dalmases traces the origins of Spain’s presence in Western Sahara and examines life during the period when the territory was first a colony and later a province “as Spanish as Cuenca.” He describes the attempts to grant it an autonomous regime as a preliminary step toward independence, the indissoluble bonds forged between Sahrawis and Spaniards, and the current situation of a conflict that, half a century later, has turned Western Sahara into what the author unequivocally calls “the Palestine of the Maghreb.”
The academic holds a PhD in History from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a Master’s degree in Contemporary History. He has worked as a journalist for fifty years and has held various positions, including Director of Radio Nacional de España and Televisión Española in Spanish Sahara; Director of the newspaper La Realidad in El Aaiún; Head of Information Services of the Saharan Government; Head of the Press Office of Spanish Radio and Television in Catalonia; and Head of News for Radiocadena Española in Catalonia. He has also been a professor at the Official School of Advertising, a consultantat the Open University of Catalonia, and a Senior Education Technician for the Provincial Council of Barcelona.
He is also the author of numerous works, including «Quiero ser Ali Bey», «Los últimos de África», «Huracán sobre el Sáhara», «La esclavitud en el Sáhara Occidental», «El desierto imaginado (África Occidental española en la literatura)», «Sáhara español: el gran fraude (Los papeles del coronel Rodríguez de Viguri)», «Viajes por el Sáhara español», «Sáhara Occidental e Ifni en la ficción literaria» and «Cuentos y leyendas del Sáhara Occidental» Some of these titles are available in the new library.
