Nationalist Senator Fernando Clavijo alarms from the press headlines about the danger of “normalizing” the inclusion of the Archipelago's waters in the Moroccan coast. And in response, I alert him to the danger of twisting reality to adapt it to his confrontational discourse against the Governments of the Canary Islands and Spain.
The spokesperson for the Canarian Coalition knows well that the denominations of the world's fishing areas used in its documentation by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are exclusively for statistical purposes, as stated in the Manual of Fisheries Statistics and any other reference of the entity; without consequences, I insist, on the sovereignty of the waters to which it refers.
There are several cases around the world in which these subdivisions refer to waters in which different neighboring countries have sovereignty, as is the case here. The so-called “Cape Verde Coast” corresponds to waters under Senegalese and Mauritanian authority, and the area delimited under the denomination of Balearic Islands includes Moroccan waters of the southern Mediterranean.
Similarly, the fishing area called “Moroccan Coast” (not “Moroccan waters”), as a geographical reference, includes Spanish and Alawite country waters, in accordance with the provisions of the International Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Both the professionals of productive activities linked to fishing in the Canary Islands, as well as the population of the islands in general, should know that only the aforementioned International Convention governs the sovereignty of the waters; in no case, the FAO fishing areas established for statistical purposes.
To say otherwise is to distort the facts, and that, Clavijo also knows.
Ariagona González, National Deputy and Minister of Environment, Heritage, Industry and Energy of the Cabildo of Lanzarote
