Madrid, August 27, 2026 (SPS) – Telecommunications company Orange has announced its intention to withdraw an advertising billboard installed along the AP-7 motorway in the Elche–Valencia direction after it featured a map depicting the occupied territory of Western Sahara as part of Moroccan territory. The announcement came following an official protest lodged by the Representation of the Polisario Front in Spain.
In a press statement issued yesterday, Wednesday, the Representation of the Polisario Front in Spain said that the Front’s representative in Spain, Abdullah Arabi, had submitted an official complaint to the company’s management on August 25, following the installation of the billboard, which contained an illegal depiction of Western Sahara as part of the territory of the Moroccan occupying state.
The statement clarified that, following the submission of the official complaint and media coverage of the incident, the company informed the Representation of its intention to withdraw the advertising campaign “within the next few days.”
The Representation of the Polisario Front in Spain welcomed the company’s notification of its intention to withdraw the advertisement, but stressed that it “will remain vigilant” until the actual removal of the billboard is confirmed or it is replaced with an alternative advertisement that does not include Western Sahara within Moroccan territory.
The Representation warned that, if the withdrawal is not carried out “within a reasonable period of time,” it will take all legal measures it deems appropriate to defend the rights and interests of the Sahrawi people.
These developments come within an international legal context that confirms the separate and distinct status of Western Sahara from Morocco. This principle has been affirmed, among other things, by rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the application of agreements between the European Union and Morocco to the Sahrawi territory.
The Polisario Front maintains that attempts to impose maps or commercial and advertising representations incorporating Western Sahara into Morocco are merely propaganda efforts intended to mislead public opinion and to impose a colonial fait accompli. Such attempts, it stresses, cannot alter the territory’s legal status, nor can they replace the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and independence.
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