Ryanair has put his foot in a diplomatic loop by connecting Madrid and Lanzarote with Dajla, a city located in the territory of Western Sahara, ancient Spanish colony controlled largely by Morocco but has claimed for decades by the Polisario Front as an independent state. The Irish airline began operating these routes in January 2025, after announcing in November that Dajla would become the thirteenth destination of his Moroccan network.
The CEO of Ryanair, Eddie Wilson, presented the opening of these connections as a commitment to tourism and economic development of “this region of Morocco”, and expressly thanked the head of the Moroccan government for its involvement. Even on November 14, the company published on social networks an image of its team posing next to a Moroccan flag and a poster with the name of the city.
As reported by the specialized media Transavia France also offers flights between Paris and Dajla. Both airlines have taken advantage of the tourist incentives promoted by the Moroccan authorities, which have allowed to double the international capacity of the airport to the 47,000 places available in 2024, according to the Minister of Tourism of Morocco, Fatim-Zahra Ammor.
The problem is that, for the Polisario Front, these flights violate international law. His spokesman has warned that companies “are operating outside legality” by not having requested permission from all parties involved in the conflict. The independence organization, backed by Algeria, controls 20% of Western Sahara and defends that no airline can fly to Dajla without its approval.
The representative of the Polisario Front against the UN in Geneva, Oubi Bouchraya, has indicated to the AFP agency that the Front considers legal actions against airlines. According to Bouchraya, Morocco tries to “impose an consummated fact of the occupation of Western Sahara, involving economic actors.”
The conflict has been kept dead for decades. Although the United Nations considers the Western Sahara a “non -autonomous territory” and maintains a peace mission since 1991, Morocco has refused to accept a referendum that includes independence as an option. In parallel, European justice has also marked distances: in 2018, the EU Court of Justice ruled that the air agreement between the Union and Morocco is not applicable to the Western Sahara, a position that the European Commission reconfirmed in December 2024.
Ryanair insists that their operations meet “all applicable air regulations”, and Transavia affirms that it has received the validation of “the competent authorities.” However, their licenses only authorize them to fly to Morocco, and that puts the big question again: is it or not the western Sahara part of Morocco?
