Fuerteventura 'twinning' with Tarfaya!

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

from Noticias Fuerteventura 

Strengthening the bonds of friendship and twinning that unite the island of Fuerteventura with the Moroccan city of Tarfaya was one of the issues that were addressed in the meeting held yesterday at the headquarters of the Cabildo by the president of the island institution, Sergio Lloret López, with the president of the Provincial Council of Tarfaya, Mohahmed Salem Behiya. The meeting was also attended by the second vice president, Claudio Gutiérrez, the Minister of Culture, Rayco León, and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Navigation and Industry of Fuerteventura, Juan Jesús Rodríguez Marichal.
Among the issues that were addressed is the maritime connection between Fuerteventura and Tarfaya, which is prepared to become operational at the expense of hiring the maritime company that will make the journey. Likewise, the twinning signed by both institutions in order to advance in their objectives was discussed, and in this sense a next trip of authorities of the Cabildo to Tarfaya was proposed to officially celebrate said twinning.

 

The president of the Cabildo, Sergio Lloret, thanked the invitation made to formalize the twinning with Tarfaya and expressed the will of the island government to continue collaborating with this region of West Africa and the desire to put back into operation the maritime line that joins Fuerteventura and Tararfaya.
For his part, the president of the Provincial Council of Tarfaya, Mohahmed Salem Behiya, expressed his satisfaction with the meeting "in which we have talked about issues related to the future of our peoples and the maritime line to strengthen relations between Tarfaya and Fuerteventura for the good of our peoples."

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Couldn't decide whether to give this article it's own thread, ended up adding to this one.

From Noticias:

Morocco prepares its defenses for control of the Maghreb.


The Alawite kingdom negotiates the Israeli 'Iron Dome' that intercepts missiles like those of Algeria in the face of the new global geopolitical-energy framework

The famous Israeli-made 'Iron Dome' missile shield would equip Morocco with the most powerful defense system in the world.

Morocco and Israel are close to finalizing a major military agreement to supply the Maghreb country with the Iron Dome defense system of the military company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, according to Israeli sources. This agreement would equip our southern neighbor with the latest and most powerful defense system in the world.

The company Rafael Advance Defense Systemns was founded as a Research and Development laboratory for the National Defense of the State of Israel, for the development of armament and military technology within the Ministry of Defense; in 2002 it was incorporated as a limited liability company.

The Rafael Corporation develops and produces military technologies for the Israel Defense Forces as well as for export. All of his ongoing projects have been classified as top secret.

Morocco-Israel-USA vs. Algeria-Russia

The conflict of energy interests is creating a new pole of power centered in the Maghreb. In this conflict Europe is the customer, Russia, Algeria, Morocco and the Central African countries would be the suppliers, in this case of gas. The United States and Israel would be the powers with interests in the area and in the control of the business.

A new geopolitical reality is brewing a few kilometers from the archipelago, and whether with Nigerian Gas,with renewables or with its new American or Israelirelations, the truth is that our neighbor places continues to place chips.

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

Another kind of related article. Published in Diario de Fuerteventura, written by Mario Ferrer:

Canary Islands and Africa: between dependencies and forgetfulness

The relationship of the Archipelago with the neighboring continent has experienced deep ups and downs, although it has almost always had Fuerteventura and Lanzarote as the spearhead.
Geographically African, politically European and culturally very close to Latin America, the Canary Islands is an archipelago that has made plenty of historical merits to boast of the 'tricontinental' label.

In the course of the centuries, the Canary Islands have been approaching or moving away from neighboring continents to the rhythm of the economic or political changes of each era. As if they were 'stone rafts', using the expression of José Saramago, the Islands have sailed through the Atlantic following the winds of history, to give rise to a mestizo society and culture, which have drunk from multiple influences, being the African one of the most important and the most pioneering.

In the knowledge of the aboriginal world of the Canary Islands, several key issues are still pending, although it seems clear that the primitive population of the Islands came from North Africa. It is not known with total certainty when they came, how they did it or with what motivations, nor is it clear the role that the great civilizations of the Mediterranean (Phoenicians, Romans or Carthaginians) had. Leaving aside the doubts regarding everything related to the arrival, a wide trace of evidence indicates that Guanches, Majos, Bimbaches and other island tribes had their roots in North Africa. From archaeological remains of different types and epigraphic or toponymic records, to classical ethnohistorical sources or the most recent genetic research, everything points to a geographical area long called Barbary, for the dominance of the Berber peoples, also called Amazigh.

After the fall of Rome, Europe became absorbed in its medieval divisions and in the defense of Christianity against the growth of Islam. The Europeans did not meet again with the Islands that already sketched the Roman maps and that the Arabs also named until the end of the Late Middle Ages, when the European crowns began to sail with more ease through the Atlantic.

Although the European conquest of the Canary Islands also had a clear link with what was happening in Africa, because it was undertaken within the strategy of obtaining defenses in the north of the continent against Islam, the result soon produced a Copernican turn in the situation of our Archipelago. The change was total: after almost a millennium in which the primitive islanders of African origin continued with their ways of life without contact with the Europeans, the arrival of the Castilians not only imposed the late medieval world in the Canary Islands, but also turned the Archipelago into the link with America.

The feudal lords practiced the raids on the majoreras coasts

For Castile, the Canary Islands was a finding of the most interesting: ideal station on the way to the Indies, watchtower from which to approach Africa, area to expand their business and perfect territory in which to experiment with the 'indigenous' tactics that they would later follow in America. The Canary Islands was something like a laboratory of what would later happen in America and Africa. However, the link with the Africa bordering the Canary Islands suffered rapid complications, since the Castilian plans of armed penetration were short-lived. Several factory towers were established on the coast, but they were lost until the last and most important, the one located in Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña, fell in 1524. In addition, in Africa the desires of the kingdom of Portugal, the other naval power of the time, predominated, so that in the treaties of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Castile achieved the recognition of the Canary Islands in exchange for renouncing other claims in that area.

The Eastern Anchorage

Once the ancestral ties were broken, what was happening on the nearby African coast began to be seen with fear, while the Spanish crown turned to America. With the Canary Islands fully Europeanized, relations were marked by mutual violence. North African corsairs frequently attacked the Islands (in 1618, Algerian pirates took almost 1,000 captives from Lanzarote), while the feudal lords of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote habitually practiced raids on the majorera coast, to take prisoners. Human trafficking was a form of business that, in addition, gave continuity to a dynamic of interreligious struggle very similar to that which they had lived for centuries in the Iberian Peninsula. This trade left its mark on the populations of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote that, very affected by being in the front line and having few defenses, saw how an important contingent of Moorish origin was integrated into their scarce census of inhabitants in the centuries after the European conquest.

Even in the most virulent moments of these attacks, the Canary Islands, and especially the easternmost Islands, maintained interests in Africa linked to trade and, above all, to fishing. The boats of Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and Gran Canaria knew well the routes of the 'Mar Chica' or 'Mar Pequeña' and their abundant fishing resources. The English navigator and merchant George Glas drew international attention already in the eighteenth century to the power of these fisheries, although the Canarian authorities had already been indicating to the Crown the need to strengthen spanish positions before these sources of wealth. These requests began to be heard more in the eighteenth century, with the signing of the first agreements with the sultanate of Morocco, to become more urgent in the nineteenth century, because of the imperialist career of European countries.
Spain was a minor European power in the nineteenth century, far from strong industrial development and struggling to maintain its last provinces of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. This did not prevent him from trying to launch a maritime-colonial space in northwest Africa, achieving that territories were recognized in the area of Morocco, Sahara and Mauritania, while consolidating his positions in the Gulf of Guinea (Fernando Poo, Río Muni, etc.).
Twentieth century

For much of the twentieth century Spain possessed large African territories with which the Canary Islands maintained close relations. With the so-called Spanish Guinea or Equatorial Guinea, the Canary Islands maintained very important economic and social ties (transport, emigration, commercial exchanges, etc.), although with the neighboring Saharan coast the links were even stronger, especially for Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. The first hosted a large part of the military and human contingent that left the Spanish Sahara after the disastrous decolonization of 1975 and the second based its economy on the fishing industry derived from the African coast. In addition to these two milestones, the contacts of the Canary Islands with these territories, until decolonization, were as continuous or more as those with the Iberian Peninsula. Even at the time of the Civil War and the post-war period, many Canarians, especially from Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, emigrated to do business in Spanish and French areas of the nearest coast: trade, construction, mines and, above all, fishing. It was another moment of splendor: going to the Sahara was like going to another Spanish province.

Everything changed with decolonization, which, in addition to the problem of Western Sahara or Spanish Sahara, left very diverse political echoes in the Canary Islands, also affecting the nationalist wave of the second half of the twentieth century. In that sense, the settlement of a prominent leader of that movement such as Antonio Cubillo in Algeria was not a minor fact in the configuration of Canarian independence sentiment.

From the decolonization, the Canary Islands not only took off politically from Africa, but also began a socioeconomic evolution very different from that followed by the surrounding African countries. While our Archipelago was integrated into the club of the rich and democratic countries of Europe, the EU, its African neighbors have lived complicated decades, more characterized by crises than by progress. The relationship with Africa today is very marked by the strong migratory pressure and the tragic trail of the shipwrecks of the fragile boats that cross the 'Mar Chica', the same sea that previously crossed the Canarian boats in search of fishing. The ghosts of the past have been joined by the current aporophobia, with Africa being almost synonymous with poverty for European ears.

In recent decades, boats have made headlines, but cultural links have also grown little by little, where it stands out in the field of archaeology, and especially economic ones, with large Canarian companies investing in different key sectors of Cape Verde, Morocco, Mauritania or other nearby countries.
Africa as an opportunity or Africa as a problem? It remains to be seen if the XXI century serves for the Canary Islands to strengthen ties or create more voids with the neighboring continent, no matter how much geography is a difficult condition to forget and if not ask the millions of European tourists who come every year attracted by the African benefits of our climate.

https://www.diariodefuerteventura.com/bl...-y-olvidos