Shifting sands: Spanish press coverage of Western Sahara before and after Spain's 2022 autonomy pivot

Abstract

This study compares how three ideologically distinct Spanish newspapers—El País (centre-left), ABC (right-wing) and Público (left-wing, online)—framed the Western Sahara conflict before and after Spain's 18 March 2022 recognition of Morocco's autonomy plan. A two-year content analysis (N = 221 articles) tracks shifts in frame use, primary sources and tone toward competing sovereignty claims. Across outlets the conflict frame dominated, while economic considerations were marginal; security and humanitarian emphases declined after the policy shift. El País and ABC partially converged, normalizing official narratives despite opposing editorial leanings. Público relied more on NGOs and Sahrawi actors and maintained the most consistently pro-Sahrawi tone. Findings lend support to concerns about elite cueing and overreliance on official narratives in the Spanish press, but show that meaningful disparities remain among newspapers with different ideological orientations.

Keywords

content analysis framing media autonomy Spanish press Western Sahara

Introduction

Western Sahara remains the last African territory on the UN list of non-self-governing territories, its sovereignty still unresolved nearly half a century after Spain's 1975 withdrawal (International Court of Justice, 1975; United Nations General Assembly, 1979). Scholars trace the stalemate to colonial legacies, rival sovereignty claims, and the changing regional alliances (Jensen, 2005; Zunes and Mundy, 2022). Spain, the former colonial power, has oscillated between neutrality and alignment with Morocco, a stance critics describe as deliberate ambiguity (Fernández-Molina and Ojeda-García, 2020).

On 18 March 2022 Madrid abruptly endorsed Morocco's autonomy proposal. This represented a sharp break with four decades of explicit support for a UN-sponsored referendum, and triggered diplomatic retaliation from Algeria and condemnation by Sahrawi representatives, while igniting partisan criticism in Spain's parliament and press (Hermida and Casqueiro, 2022).

Despite the conflict's geopolitical stakes, Western Sahara receives little sustained attention in global and Spanish media, surfacing mainly during diplomatic crises (Fernández-Molina and Ojeda-García, 2020). Media scholarship is correspondingly thin; no work compares how ideologically diverse Spanish dailies framed the dispute before and after the 2022 policy pivot.

This study addresses that gap by analyzing El País (centre-left), Público (left-wing), and ABC (right-conservative) across the March 2021–March 2023 period. Drawing on framing theory (Entman, 1993), it interrogates how these outlets constructed sovereignty claims, selected sources, and adjusted tone as Spain realigned its foreign policy. In this context, framing does not merely describe journalistic choices, but also reveals how news discourse contributes to the legitimation of state narratives and collective identity (Anderson, 1983; Brown and Harlow, 2019; Zirugo, 2025). This is especially relevant in Spain, where media still grapple with the colonial legacy of Western Sahara and, through their framing of the conflict, help normalize narratives that reconcile the country's postcolonial identity with its contemporary foreign-policy stance.

Literature review

Background on the Western Sahara conflict

Western Sahara's current status stems from Spain's withdrawal in 1975 under the Madrid Accords, which transferred administrative control to Morocco and Mauritania without a self-determination vote (Jensen, 2005). The Sahrawi Polisario Front, supported by Algeria and recognized by the African Union as the representative of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), rejected the accords and proclaimed independence, leading to prolonged armed conflict with Morocco (Zunes and Mundy, 2022). The United Nations continues to list Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory and maintains the MINURSO framework for a self-determination process (United Nations Security Council, 2025), while Morocco insists on autonomy under its sovereignty and Spain maintains complex diplomatic and economic ties with both sides (Liceras, 2022). These unresolved and competing claims sustain the stalemate.

The conflict is one of the world's longest unresolved territorial disputes, often described as a “frozen conflict” (Zoubir, 2010). In 1975, the International Court of Justice affirmed the Sahrawi people's inalienable right to self-determination (International Court of Justice, 1975; Joffé, 2010). The United Nations General Assembly reiterated that right in Resolution 34/37 (1979), and the United Nations Security Council created MINURSO (United Nations Security Council, 1991) to organize a referendum that remains indefinitely postponed. A 2020 breach of the cease-fire revived low-intensity hostilities, and Resolution 2703 (United Nations Security Council, 2023) merely extended MINURSO's mandate. Existing literature on the conflict converges on one point: competing sovereignty claims, reinforced by regional patronage, have locked the dispute into protracted stalemate (see Fernández-Molina and Ojeda-García, 2020; Jensen, 2005; White, 2015; Zunes and Mundy, 2022).

Although Madrid relinquished formal control of the territory, it remains the former colonial power, a top trading partner of both Morocco and Algeria, and a state heavily exposed to Sahrawi migration and diaspora activism (Liceras, 2022). The Court of Justice of the European Union's insistence that Western Sahara is “separate and distinct” from Morocco keeps Spanish fisheries and phosphate firms vulnerable to litigation (Fernández-Molina and Ojeda-García, 2020; White, 2015). Diplomatic stakes spiked on 18 March 2022, when Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez endorsed Morocco's autonomy plan, describing it as “the most serious, realistic, and credible basis” for resolving the conflict, reversing decades of official neutrality, and provoking cross-party outrage domestically (Liceras, 2022). This policy shift has been welcomed by some as pragmatic and denounced by others as a breach of Spain's legal and moral duties (Minder, 2022; Wilson and El Barakah, 2022), ending in a diplomatic rupture with Algeria and criticism from civil society and opposition parties (Meneses, 2022).

Previous scholarship depicts Western Sahara as a “forgotten war” that surfaces only when Madrid's diplomacy is on the line (Jensen, 2005; Zoubir, 2010). Despite the existence of isolated case studies, the literature is scarce, and no study has tracked how frame, source, and tone interact before and after a clear policy shift toward the Western Sahara conflict. Together, these studies indicate that particular frames such as conflict, securitization, diplomatic, and humanitarian recur across time (Moreno-Mercado, 2020; White, 2015), but we still lack empirical evidence on how Spanish outlets’ ideology conditions their salience before and after major diplomatic events.

Spanish media and conflict coverage

Hallin and Mancini's (2004) polarized pluralist model describes Spain's media system appropriately: late professionalization, strong party ties, and significant state subsidies shape news production (González Rodríguez et al., 2010; Seijas Costa et al., 2024). El País is associated with the center-left PSOE, ABC with the conservative PP, and Público with Podemos on the left (Guerrero-Solé, 2022; Labio and Pineda, 2016). The prevailing “declarative journalism” privileges official statements over investigative depth, muting critical scrutiny of foreign affairs (Jerónimo and Esparza, 2023). These allegiances extend to foreign policy coverage, where editorial stances often mirror the positions of their political affiliates, limiting pluralism in the representation of international conflicts and shaping which political actors are legitimized or marginalized through sourcing and framing choices (Brown and Harlow, 2019; Entman, 2003; Moeller, 2018). Even newer, digital-native outlets tend to reproduce hegemonic narratives rather than offering truly alternative framings (Labio and Pineda, 2016). In such a system, a sudden shift in Madrid's stance on Western Sahara can be expected to spread quickly through news frames and source hierarchies.

The ideological range of the Spanish press is often reflected in its framing patterns. ABC, a right-wing outlet, aligns with monarchist conservatism and backs Partido Popular governments (Esperanza and Humanes, 2017; Valdeón, 2023). El País, launched in 1976 as a post-Franco “newspaper of record,” projects liberal-centrist objectivity but maintains close ties to PSOE cabinets (Vidal, 2018). Público, a 2007 digital newspaper, aligns with Podemos and anti-establishment movements, and emphasizes humanitarian and cultural aspects of the conflict, while sourcing NGOs and exiled activists (Vidal, 2018). Nevertheless, even progressive channels may fall to conventional narratives under geopolitical or economic restrictions (Entman, 2003), a pattern also observed in postcolonial media systems where journalism mediates legitimacy struggles (Zirugo, 2025).

On an international scale, progressive outlets covering conflicts are more likely to highlight humanitarian concerns and civilian suffering, whereas conservative ones tend to emphasize terrorism, national security, and state legitimacy (Philo and Berry, 2011; Zhang and Luther, 2020); even during peace negotiations, journalists can emphasize military maneuvers and elite diplomacy rather than local perspectives or long-term justice concerns (Badad, 2025).

Studies on Spanish coverage of conflicts find that security and conflict frames tend to dominate over humanitarian angles, especially when events are episodically reported (Calatrava-García et al., 2023). Focusing on Western Sahara, a cross-national content analysis (Spain/France, 2014–2019) shows convergence on a security lens (terrorism, regional instability, and border control) across ideologically distinct dailies (Moreno-Mercado, 2020). Case-focused research on Spanish press treatment of diplomatic events indicates decontextualization: coverage privileges immediate elite statements and episodic conflict while giving limited space to historical and legal roots; nevertheless, left-leaning outlets more often include legal arguments and Sahrawi agency than conservative ones (Forte, 2012).

Mainstream media often rely heavily on official or elite sources, limiting diversity of perspectives (Herman, 2018). Bennett's (1990) indexing hypothesis explains this alignment with elite discourse, though it varies by outlet. Ideological orientation, ownership, and institutional ties also shape sourcing patterns (Ardèvol-Abreu, 2015), reflecting Spain's broader media-state entanglement (Baumgartner and Chaqués Bonafont, 2015). In the same vein, Jerónimo and Esparza (2023) contend that Spanish news production remains strongly dependent on institutional sources.

Tone operates as a legitimacy cue: outlets sympathetic to the government adopt neutral-to-positive affect once policies stabilize, while critical outlets maintain negative or moralistic tone (Eshbaugh-Soha, 2010; Hopmann et al., 2010). Tone can be conceptualized in different ways; it can be based on valence, ranging from favorable to unfavorable descriptions of a given actor or policy, or on alignment, in which outlets adopt a tone that is explicitly pro- or anti- a particular side or issue position (Gever, 2019).

Framing theory

Framing theory remains one of the most widely used and analytically productive approaches in media and communication research. Scholars in media studies, building on Goffman's (1974) foundational work, have advanced the concept through varied definitions, typologies, and applications. Among these, Entman's (1993: 52) formulation remains central: “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text.”

Although the concept of “frames” has been applied across various fields, in this study it refers specifically to how news media organize and present information about international conflicts. News coverage is, therefore, not a direct mirror of reality but a carefully constructed representation shaped by institutional routines, political pressures, and editorial norms (Entman, 1993). Even in the absence of deliberate bias, journalists inevitably emphasize some aspects over others, often influenced by the selection of sources, language, and narrative structure, resulting in a partial reconstruction of complex events (Schudson, 2011).

Framing effects take place through interacting with preexisting interpretive schemas in audiences’ minds (Entman, 2003) which can affect decision-making, thoughts and recall, attitudes, and behavior (Huang and Xu, 2024; Kahneman and Tversky, 1984; Scheufele, 1999; Valkenburg et al., 1999). In the context of foreign policy conflicts, for example, a journalist may make decisions such as source selection, lexical choice, narrative emphasis, tone, and other decisions to frame violence as a struggle for sovereignty and self-determination or, alternatively, as a regional security threat (Elmasry, 2024). In this sense, frames structure media narratives and influence how readers understand and evaluate geopolitical realities.

This framework is particularly suited to study the case of Western Sahara which has received inconsistent international media attention due to its longstanding nature, as well as its geopolitical sensitivity, which have often made it subject to media reframing (Zunes and Mundy, 2022). Spain's official endorsement of Morocco's autonomy plan in March 2022 after decades of supporting UN resolutions that called for a referendum on the self-determination for the people of Western Sahara represented a major shift in policy that ultimately affected state relations and domestic media's framing of the conflict (Reuters, 2022).

Framing theory thus provides an appropriate lens for identifying how Spanish newspapers reconstructed the Western Sahara conflict before and after this diplomatic turning point, and whether their coverage reflected shifts in alignment and tone. In particular, it allows us to analyze whether Spanish outlets such as El País, ABC, and Público employed distinct frames, prioritized different sources, and varied in their tone toward Western Sahara's sovereignty, based on their respective ideological orientations. In this study, sourcing and tone are examined as dimensions of framing that reveal how outlets align with or distance themselves from elite narratives (Entman, 1993). To achieve this, the study investigates the following questions:

RQ1: How did El País, ABC, and Público vary in their framing of Western Sahara before and after Spain's recognition of Morocco's autonomy plan in 2022?

RQ2: How did the three Spanish national newspapers vary in their use of sources before and after this recognition?

RQ3: How did the tone toward Western Sahara's sovereignty claims vary before and after this recognition?

Method

This study employs a comparative content analysis to examine how Spanish national newspapers reported on the Western Sahara conflict across a two-year period. Content analysis, defined as a systematic and replicable method for examining communication content, is ideal for comparing large article samples (Neuendorf and Kumar, 2016).

Three prominent Spanish newspapers with broad ideological diversity were selected for this study: El País, ABC, and Público. These outlets were selected to ensure the entire spectrum of Spanish national discourse on the conflict is included. El País is widely regarded as a centrist to center-left publication with mainstream liberal leanings, while ABC represents the conservative right and holds historical significance in Spanish journalism (Guerrero-Solé, 2022; Mercado-Sáez et al., 2019). Público, published exclusively online, is known for its progressive editorial stance and alignment with leftist causes (Baumgartner and Chaqués Bonafont, 2015). All three newspapers are comparable in scope, language, and national relevance.

Sampling and procedures

The Spanish government officially endorsed Morocco's autonomy plan on 18 March 2022 (Reuters, 2022). To allow for a direct comparison of coverage one year before and one year after Spain's diplomatic pivot on the Western Sahara, a two-year timeframe was taken from 17 March 2021 to 18 March 2023. This allowed for the capture of any immediate changes in framing, sources, and tone over the two years.

Articles were retrieved from each newspaper's online archive using targeted keyword searches such as “Sáhara Occidental” and “Frente Polisario.” This allowed for the selection of the entire population of articles relevant to the conflict during the period. Only news stories were selected for analysis; opinion columns, editorials, and feature stories were excluded. The unit of analysis was the entire article. Articles where the topic was only briefly mentioned or tangential were excluded. This process resulted in a total sample of 221 articles with 96 articles prerecognition of Morocco's autonomy plan, and 125 postrecognition: 101 from El País, 43 from ABC, and 77 from Público. Details are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Overview of sampled articles by outlet.

Newspaper	Ideological orientation	Publication type	Number of articles
El País	Center-left	National daily	101
ABC	Right-wing	National daily	43
Público	Left-wing	National online daily	77
Total	–	–	221

Note. Coverage spans from 17 March 2021 to 18 March 2023.

Coding

A codebook was developed to examine descriptive variables, the presence of news frames, source attribution, and the tone regarding sovereignty claims. Each article was assigned a unique number and was coded for the headline and publication date. In addition, a variable was included to track territorial terminology, recording which label (i.e. Western Sahara, Moroccan Sahara, Former Spanish Sahara, or other) was emphasized in each article.

To identify framing devices, the researchers first used a deductive approach by adapting predefined frames from previous studies (see Moreno-Mercado, 2020; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000). Subsequently, through a preliminary examination of articles from each outlet, an inductive method was followed to account for emerging frames.

Six framing categories were identified for analysis: conflict, security, humanitarian, diplomatic/legal responsibility, colonial heritage, and economic. Four of these frames, namely conflict, humanitarian, diplomatic/legal responsibility, and economic were adapted from Semetko and Valkenburg (2000). The diplomatic/legal responsibility frame is a contextual adaptation of their original attribution of responsibility frame, modified to reflect the international legal and geopolitical dimensions specific to the Western Sahara. The security and colonial heritage frames were informed by previous literature and developed inductively (Moreno-Mercado, 2020). Each frame was coded as a binary variable, marking its presence or absence in the full article text.

Multiple frames could be assigned to a single article, depending on content. The conflict frame assessed highlights of disputes, territorial claims, or violent clashes between actors involved in the conflict; the security frame examined whether the issue was linked to regional concerns such as terrorism, migration, or border control in North Africa; the humanitarian frame looked at whether the focus was on emotional stories, humanitarian suffering, or personal experiences; the diplomatic/legal responsibility frame focused on the assignment of blame or responsibility to specific actors with referral to legal UN resolutions, treaties, or official statements; the colonial heritage/self-determination frame explored references to Spain's colonial legacy, historical agreements (e.g. Madrid Accords), or mentions of colonial debt; and the economic frame asked whether natural resources, economic partnerships, or trade agreements involving the territory were highlighted.

For this study, sources were inductively identified and grouped into six categories reflecting their involvement in this conflict, these were: Spanish Government, Moroccan Government, Polisario Front/SADR, Other non-Spanish Governments, UN/International Organizations, and non-Governmental Sources representing civil society and experts. Coders selected the source group that appeared most frequently and most prominently within each article (i.e. frequency and placement of quotes or references). In cases of ties between two source types, the one appearing first in the article was coded as primary.

To capture how each article positioned itself in the sovereignty debate, coders also assessed the overall tone of coverage. This was coded as a categorical variable with three options: Pro-Moroccan; Pro-Sahrawi/Polisario; Neutral or Mixed.

Coding of tone was based on the article's dominant narrative, including lexical choices (e.g. naming the territory), source balance, and how claims were contextualized. For instance, consistent use of terms like “Sáhara Marroquí” and prominent inclusion of Moroccan diplomatic views were classified as pro-Moroccan. The reverse held for pro-Sahrawi articles. When narratives were balanced or ambiguous, a neutral/mixed tone was assigned.

Intercoder reliability

Two coders, both proficient in Spanish, were trained on the coding scheme. A test was performed using Krippendorff's alpha, a robust metric that adjusts for chance agreement, to measure intercoder reliability (Krippendorff, 2019). A random subset of 26 articles which represented 11.8% of the total corpus was selected from the three outlets proportionally, and was selected for double coding. Overall, a satisfactory level of agreement was reached, with Alpha values ranging from 0.83 to 1.

Results

Frames

RQ1 asks: “How did El País, ABC, and Público vary in their framing of Western Sahara before and after Spain's recognition of Morocco's autonomy plan in 2022?.”

Six framing variables were coded for this analysis: conflict, security, humanitarian, diplomatic/legal-responsibility, colonial/self-determination, and economic. The conflict frame dominated coverage, present in 201 of 221 articles (91%), while the economic frame was least frequent, used in 93 stories (42.1%). Diplomatic/legal-responsibility appeared in 184 articles (83.3%) and colonial/self-determination in 182 articles (82.4%), followed by humanitarian (116, 52.5%) and security frames (108, 48.9%).

Despite considerable consistency in the salience of conflict across outlets, several significant differences stood out between the outlets. Público more often used the colonial/self-determination frame (94.8%) than El País (84.2%) or ABC (55.8%; χ²(2, N = 221) = 29.281, p < .001). It also relied more on diplomatic/legal-responsibility (94.8%) than ABC (81.4%) or El País (75.2%; χ²(2, N = 221) = 12.122, p = .002). Differences for the other frames were not significant (all p ≥ .051). Table 2 summarizes the distributions, showing Público applied these two frames most systematically.

Table 2.

Frames by outlet (overall).

Frame	ABC n (%)	El País n (%)	Público n (%)
Conflict	38 (88.4)	96 (95.0)	67 (87.0)
Security	24 (55.8)	55 (54.5)	29 (37.7)
Humanitarian	19 (44.2)	52 (51.5)	45 (58.4)
Diplomatic/legal-responsibility	35 (81.4)	76 (75.2)	73 (94.8)
Colonial/self-determination	24 (55.8)	85 (84.2)	73 (94.8)
Economic	12 (27.9)	45 (44.6)	36 (46.8)

Turning to period effects around the 18 March 2022 recognition, Figure 1 shows clear shifts in two frames: security framing declined from 67.4% (64/95) before to 34.9% (44/126) after (χ²(1, N = 221) = 24.267, p < .001), and humanitarian framing from 62.1% (59/95) to 45.2% (57/126) (χ²(1, N = 221) = 6.363, p = .012). The colonial/self-determination frame rose from 76.8% to 86.5%, but this difference was not significant (χ²(1, N = 221) = 3.482, p = .062). Other frames were stable across periods (all p ≥ .145). A pooled test confirmed an overall redistribution of frames across time (χ²(5, N = 884 frame mentions) = 12.954, p = .024), but not across outlets (χ²(10, N = 884) = 11.511, p = .319).

Figure 1.

Overall frame prevalence by period (before n = 96; after n = 125).

Figure 2.

Tone by outlet and period.

In ABC, security framing declined from 85.7% to 27.3% (χ²(1, N = 43) = 14.88, p < .001), economic from 47.6% to 9.1% (χ²(1, N = 43) = 7.93, p = .0049), while diplomatic/legal-responsibility increased from 66.7% to 95.5% (χ²(1, N = 43) = 5.88, p = .015); other frames were stable (p ≥ .17).

In El País, humanitarian dropped from 69.8% to 31.3% (χ²(1, N = 101) = 14.99, p < .001), security from 67.9% to 39.6% (χ²(1, N = 101) = 8.16, p = .004), and diplomatic/legal-responsibility from 88.7% to 60.4% (χ²(1, N = 101) = 10.80, p = .001). Economic framing showed an upward trend (35.8% to 54.2%) but did not reach significance (χ²(1, N = 101) = 3.42, p = .064). Conflict and colonial/self-determination remained high (p > .38).

In Público, conflict increased (71.4% to 92.9%; χ²(1, N = 77) = 6.21, p = .0127), while colonial/self-determination and diplomatic/legal responsibility remained near-universal in both periods (≈95%), and security, humanitarian, and economic usage were stable (all p ≥ .27).

Sources

RQ2 asks: “How did the three Spanish national newspapers vary in their use of sources before and after Spain's recognition?.”

Primary sourcing was coded as the single most-prominent source per article across six categories: Spanish government, Moroccan government, Polisario/SADR, other non-Spanish governments, UN/international organizations, and NGO/nongovernmental voices. The Spanish government was the most frequent source (81, 36.7%), followed by Polisario/SADR (41, 18.6%), NGO/nongovernmental voices (33, 14.9%), other governments (27, 12.2%), UN/international organizations (22, 10.0%), and the Moroccan government (17, 7.7%).

Chi-square tests indicate substantial outlet differences in source selection (χ²(10, N = 221) = 51.375, p < .001, V = 0.34). ABC relied on Spanish-government sources in 60.5% of its articles, compared to 36.6% in El País and 23.4% in Público. El País cited Moroccan officials more often (14.9%) than ABC (2.3%) or Público (1.3%). Público most frequently foregrounded NGOs (31.2%) and also used Polisario/SADR in 19.5%, while El País showed the highest Polisario share among the two mainstream outlets (22.8%). Table 3 summarizes these results.

Table 3.

Sources by outlet (overall).

Source	ABC n (%)	El País n (%)	Público n (%)
Spanish government	26 (60.5)	37 (36.6)	18 (23.4)
Moroccan government	1 (2.3)	15 (14.9)	1 (1.3)
Polisario/SADR	3 (7.0)	23 (22.8)	15 (19.5)
Other governments	6 (14.0)	10 (9.9)	11 (14.3)
UN/international orgs	2 (4.7)	12 (11.9)	8 (10.4)
NGO/nongovernment	5 (11.6)	4 (4.0)	24 (31.2)

Note. SADR: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

χ²(10, N = 221) = 51.37, p < .001.

Period differences in the overall source mix were not significant (χ²(5, N = 221) = 9.698, p = .084), though UN/international organizations declined (from 15.8% to 5.6%), while NGO voices rose (from 10.5% to 18.3%).

Changes by outlet were selective. ABC shifted significantly (χ²(5, N = 43) = 12.37, p = .030): Spanish-government reliance declined (76.2% to 45.5%), while other-government (4.8% to 22.7%) and NGO voices increased (0% to 22.7%). Público's sourcing also changed (χ²(5, N = 77) = 13.41, p = .020): NGO actors predominated prerecognition (38.1%), with UN and other governments tied (23.8% each); after recognition, Spanish government became most frequent (4.8% to 30.4%), followed by NGOs (28.6%) and Polisario/SADR (23.2%). El País' distribution remained stable (χ²(5, N = 101) = 2.16, p = .826): Spanish government remained dominant (35.8% to 37.5%), with Polisario/SADR consistently second (20.8% to 25.0%).

Tone

RQ3 asks: “What is the tone of the news coverage toward sovereignty claims in ABC, El País, and Público?.” Three categories were coded: Pro-Moroccan, Pro-Sahrawi/Polisario, and Neutral/Mixed. Overall, 54.8% of articles were Pro-Sahrawi, 28.1% Neutral/Mixed, and 17.2% Pro-Moroccan.

By outlet, Público was overwhelmingly Pro-Sahrawi (81.8%), El País displayed a more balanced mix but leaned Pro-Sahrawi (42.6% Pro-Sahrawi, 37.6% Neutral/Mixed, and 19.8% Pro-Moroccan), while ABC was the most balanced (Pro-Sahrawi 34.9%, Neutral/Mixed 27.9%, Pro-Moroccan 37.2%). These outlet differences were significant and are illustrated in Table 4.

Table 4.

Tone by outlet (overall).

Tone	ABC n (%)	El País n (%)	Público n (%)
Pro-Sahrawi/Polisario	15 (34.9)	43 (42.6)	63 (81.8)
Neutral/Mixed	12 (27.9)	38 (37.6)	12 (15.6)
Pro-Moroccan	16 (37.2)	20 (19.8)	2 (2.6)

χ²(4, N = 221) = 43.66, p < .001, Cramér's V = 0.31.

Across periods and outlets, tonal shifts were minor and nonsignificant (χ²(2, N = 221) = 4.15, p = .125, V = 0.14): Pro-Sahrawi tone rose slightly (51.6% to 57.1%), Pro-Moroccan increased modestly (13.7% to 19.8%), and Neutral/Mixed declined (34.7% to 23.0%). El País was the only outlet showing significant change in tone (χ²(2, N = 101) = 15.33, p < .001), shifting from predominantly Neutral/Mixed before recognition (49.1%) to near parity between Pro-Sahrawi and Pro-Moroccan afterward (39.6% and 35.4% respectively). ABC's distribution was steady (χ²(2, N = 43) = 1.91, p = .385), and Público remained dominantly Pro-Sahrawi with a small Neutral/Mixed gain. Figure 2 illustrates tonal variation across outlets and periods.

Discussion

This study examined how three ideologically distinct Spanish national newspapers (El País, ABC, and Público) covered the Western Sahara conflict over a two-year period including Spain's abrupt March 2022 foreign-policy shift. Spain's sudden change in policy offers a natural experiment in media autonomy, revealing how news organizations recalibrate narratives after elite cues shift. The analyses revealed that coverage of the conflict was visible across the two-year sample but especially pronounced in Público and El País. One possible explanation is that the 2022 policy reversal triggered a temporary surge in coverage, particularly in El País, traditionally close to Spain's Socialist governments and seeking to mediate public reaction through editorial balance.

This study examined the use of six distinct frames to assess how their frequency changed before and after Spain's recognition of Morocco's autonomy plan. The most prevalent frame overall was the conflict frame, appearing in 91% of articles and remaining dominant across periods. The widespread use of this frame across both left and right-leaning papers aligns with previous research showing a journalistic preference for strategic rivalry over structural or historical grievances in lasting conflicts (Philo and Berry, 2011; Wolfsfeld et al., 2008). Such changes in frame usage are not specific to Spain but occur in other contexts where foreign policy shifts (see Badad and el-Nawawy, 2025; El-Nawawy and Elmasry, 2022).

Nonetheless, significant variations emerged among outlets. Público adopted a colonial and self-determination frame in nearly all of its coverage (94.8%), reflecting its leftist and prodecolonization stance (González Rodríguez et al., 2010). ABC used the same frame in only 55.8% of articles, a statistically significant gap showing ideological alignment with broader foreign-policy discourse. Público portrayed the conflict in terms of historical injustice and Sahrawi sovereignty, while ABC presented it closer to the post-2022 official position, even as pro-Moroccan tone did not increase. El País fell in-between, employing the colonial frame in 84.2% of articles; an attempt to balance Spain's historical responsibility with its changing position.

The diplomatic/legal responsibility frame followed a similar trend. Público used it most (94.8%), followed by ABC (81.4%) and El País (75.2%). While variation was less dramatic, it still reflects editorial differences. Notably, both ABC and Público used international legal arguments, though differently: ABC usage was largely to justify Spain's pivot, while Público's was to critique Moroccan claims to sovereignty. Framing, as Entman (1993) argued, involves selective emphasis guiding interpretation.

Two frame categories declined sharply after March 2022: security (67.4% to 34.9%) and humanitarian (62.1% to 45.2%). These declines indicate that humanitarian and security narratives lost salience once Spain adopted a stance more sympathetic to Morocco, especially in El País (where the humanitarian frame fell from 69.8% to 31.3%). The reduction of frames previously emphasizing civilian suffering and regional instability supports Wolfsfeld et al.'s (2008) claim that humanitarian narratives tend to recede once elite consensus forms on a specific issue.

Outlet-specific patterns reinforce this. ABC reduced its use of the economic frame (47.6% to 9.1%) while increasing diplomatic/legal framing (66.7% to 95.5%), consistent with conservative alignment with elite preferences. Conversely, El País decreased its use of legal-diplomatic framing (88.7% to 60.4%). This can possibly be interpreted as a strategy to avoid drawing attention to the tension between Spain's historical obligations and its policy realignment after decades of support to UN resolutions calling for a referendum on Western Sahrawis’ self-determination. These shifts illustrate Entman's (2003) concept of “cascading activation”: elite signals guide which narratives are foregrounded and which are downplayed.

The findings suggest that sourcing patterns also likely played a key role in shaping dominant frames. ABC relied heavily on Spanish government sources (60.5%), particularly before the policy change, consistent with Bennett's (1990) indexing theory that media mirror elite discourse, especially in foreign policy. After March 2022, however, ABC reduced official sourcing, likely because the new policy was already established and required less legitimation. Público, by contrast, consistent with its critical orientation, relied more on NGO and Polisario sources but also increased its use of government sources after the shift (from 4.8% to 30.4%), showing that critical coverage does not necessarily prevent the use of official voices, especially when those voices are subjected to scrutiny. For example, a 30 March 2022 Público article highlighted cross-party condemnation of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Sahara policy-change (Araque Conde, 2022), quoting Gabriel Rufián, a spokesperson for the pro-independence Catalan party (ERC) in Spain's Congress of Deputies asking, “Why does the government defend the Ukrainian people's right to exist against Russia, but not the Sahrawi people's right against Morocco?.”¹

El País remained consistently reliant on official sources, reflecting Vidal's (2018) “centrist-professionalist” model. That is, while not overtly partisan, El País privileges institutional voices and tends to reflect the contours of official discourse, demonstrating Spain's broader “journalism of declarations” (Baumgartner and Chaqués Bonafont, 2015). It further provides evidence of Spanish media's overreliance on official sources which Jerónimo and Esparza (2023) document. Across the two-year sample, official sources outnumbered Polisario or Sahrawi voices by a wide margin. In this context, Entman's (1993) view that sourcing is a key driver of framing, and that overreliance on elite voices may marginalize alternative perspectives, is supported. However, El País's relatively frequent use of Polisario and Sahrawi sources compared to the other outlets, despite its proximity to the governing PSOE, suggests a professional balancing act rather than ideological dissent. The outlet signals impartiality through humanitarian or historical framing while tonally adjusting to the government's shift, exemplifying how centrist media reproduce legitimacy during foreign-policy realignments (Hallin and Mancini, 2004).

Interestingly, the analysis of tone only partially corroborates the ideological leanings suggested by frame and source use; it aligns with framing/sourcing in some cases (notably El País), but it does not uniformly follow them across outlets. Público maintained a strong pro-Sahrawi stance throughout the two-year period (81.8%), while ABC was the most pro-Moroccan overall (37.2%), yet its pro-Moroccan share declined after March 2022. This can be interpreted as strategic hedging: once the government adopts the new line, ABC no longer needed overt advocacy to differentiate itself and instead performs alignment through legitimacy cues (e.g. diplomatic/legal frames and official voices) while tonally moderating to avoid audience backlash or reputational costs. This moderation also suggests a tension between ABC's conservative stance and its partial adaptation to official cues, indicating that even oppositional outlets may adjust framing when national policy shifts (Bennett, 1990).

El País shifted over time: its coverage became increasingly pro-Moroccan after the policy change, with 35.4% of articles taking a pro-Moroccan tone. This is consistent with cascading activation; a centrist outlet normalizes the executive pivot even without complete changes in sourcing composition (Entman, 2003).

Overall, there was no system-wide “rally around the flag” effect where media shift positions following major diplomatic events (Baum and Groeling, 2009); rather, the shift is concentrated in El País, while ABC moves in the opposite direction and Público remains stable. These patterns show how framing, sourcing, and tone functioned as mechanisms through which each outlet positioned Spain's policy change to its audience: either legitimizing, contesting, or cautiously balancing the government's new stance.

Conclusion

Overall, the findings indicate a broad but uneven alignment between editorial ideology and framing patterns: while Público consistently upheld a decolonial, pro-Sahrawi position, El País and ABC adjusted their framing in response to changing political cues. These findings are consistent with earlier observations about ideological parallelism in European media systems and demonstrate how Spanish newspapers mediate foreign-policy change through frame realignment and selective sourcing (Hallin and Mancini, 2004).

The findings point to selective constraint on media autonomy. Humanitarian framing declines overall after the pivot, but this drop is driven by El País; Público is stable and ABC shows no significant change. When elites shift positions, centrist outlets reallocate attention away from civilian suffering, while ideologically anchored outlets resist and conservative outlets signal alignment through legal/official frames rather than humanitarian ones (Entman, 1993, 2003; Hamilton, 2004). This variation across outlets suggests that not all media are equally susceptible to elite influence: editorial mission, audience expectations, and funding models, including broader processes of financialization that can heighten dependence on political and corporate elites, also play a role in how framing changes (Ardèvol-Abreu, 2015; Entman, 1993; Schudson, 2011).

Despite these findings, the study has several limitations. First, the numbers of articles were uneven between outlets (El País contributed significantly more stories than ABC) which can potentially inflate the visibility of frames common to the largest dataset. Second, the study focused solely on news articles and excluded editorials or opinion pieces, which could be explored through Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995) to capture deeper ideological and linguistic dimensions. Third, the chosen two-year period aimed to capture the immediate reactions but not longer-term editorial repositioning on the issue. Future studies could extend the timeline to assess the durability of framing shifts. Future comparative research on Moroccan and Algerian media could also reveal whether regional competition reinforces or disrupts patterns found in Spanish media.

Lastly, the findings have implications for Sahrawi advocacy, Spanish foreign-policy accountability, and media studies more broadly. They show that when humanitarian and decolonial narratives fade during diplomatic realignments, advocates must find new ways to sustain public visibility, while policymakers should recognize how elite cues shape the limits of public debate on foreign policy. Safeguarding a plural media system is therefore essential to ensure that humanitarian perspectives remain visible and continue informing democratic debate. Overall, the study confirms that foreign-policy changes are not simply reported; they are narrated, contested, and reframed according to the political logics of the newsroom (Schudson, 2011).

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Djamil Kerrouche

Oussama Badad

Funding

Open Access funding was provided by the Qatar National Library.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability

The data underlying this study consist of publicly available newspaper articles. Due to copyright restrictions, the full texts cannot be redistributed. Aggregate results and statistical outputs are available from the corresponding author on request.

Notes

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