Spain Withdraws from UN Sahara Debate, Surprising Decolonization Committee

"I was saying that we have spoken with the secretariat to inform them that we will withdraw our registration from the list of speakers for today. Thank you very much," the Spanish diplomat briefly stated, without giving further details. After this intervention, the representatives of the other countries who had registered addressed the issue of the Sahara, advocating the resolution of a conflict that has lasted for nearly half a century.

The chairman of the committee was so surprised by the decision of the Spanish representative that he asked him to repeat himself. "Can the representative of Spain repeat what he said? There was a problem and I did not hear him," he said. In fact, the Spanish representative, a little nervous during his statement, was inaudible, no longer knowing whether to intervene in Spanish or English. The committee told him that there were translation services and he finally launched in Spanish.