On March 21, a group of Annobonese demonstrators once again gathered in Madrid to break the silence on the harsh conditions faced by their people.

Annobón is an island of 17 square kilometers located in the Atlantic Ocean, under the archipelago of Sao Tome and Principe, about 335 kilometers off the coast of Gabon. It is a volcanic island surrounded by very deep waters. Its population ranges between 11,000 and 12,000, although the majority live in exile. Some 3,000 people remain on the island, which, according to the Annobonese living in Spain, “are suffering a slow and silent extermination.”

This small island, already located in the southern hemisphere, belongs to Equatorial Guinea by the whims of colonization and decolonization, like the rest of African peoples and cultures. Annobón was colonized by the Portuguese in 1471 and was used as a strategic stopover point in the transatlantic slave trade. In 1778, Portugal ceded the island to Spain. For more than a century, Spain neglected this territory until 1898, when it lost Cuba, and began to exert tighter control over the colonized territories in Africa. Its only colonies on the continent were Western Sahara, the island of Fernando Po (island of the Bubis, today Bioko), the island of Annobón, and the continental territory known as the Muni River (where the Fang people live, as well as in Gabon and Cameroon), which today is the continental part of Equatorial Guinea. Spain exploited its territories and its people, like the rest of the European colonial powers, and when the decade of independence arrived, it did not want to get rid of its colonies.

Decolonization 'Spanish style'

While Portugal, under the Salazar dictatorship, waged bloody and protracted wars of decolonization, other colonial powers such as Belgium, France, and Great Britain capitulated to African independence movements, although they maintained political and economic control through puppet governments. In many cases, the former powers continued to exploit African resources, controlling armies, trade, culture, and even, in the case of France, the currency.

Spain was no different, but its situation was peculiar: it was living under a fascist dictatorship and was not ready to talk about independence or democracy. It only yielded to UN pressure, and it did so reluctantly and in a chaotic manner.

Spain, immersed in Franco's fascist dictatorship, carried out a decolonization that did not even reach the exploitative and supremacist standards of the rest of Europe. Franco ceded the Sahara to Morocco, on the one hand, and unified the other three territories with their peoples, the island of Annobón, the island of Fernando Po, and Rio Muni, under a newly created country: Equatorial Guinea. This country brought together peoples who had little or nothing to do with each other. Even the language of Annobón, Fa d'Ambô, is shared with parts of Sao Tome and Principe, but not with the rest of Equatorial Guinea. As in the rest of the continent, the borders did not correspond to the pre-slavery and pre-colonization entities and nothing was consulted with the African peoples or their representatives.

Irresponsibly, Spain created the only country pending decolonization on the continent, according to the UN, which is Western Sahara. For some years now, the Annabonese people have been claiming that they are also pending decolonization, because the dictatorial government of Equatorial Guinea, the entity created by Franco, discriminates against them, and they are being exterminated little by little.

In 1968, this “independent” Equatorial Guinea held elections, something that in Spain could not even be dreamed of for 40 years, with which the monstrous dictator Francisco Macías Nguema, who at that time, did not even know of the existence of Annobón, came to power. The first ship that the administration of “independent” Guinea sent to Annobón sailed two years later. “We had nothing when this happened, no clothes, nothing. No education, no healthcare, nothing like it." Although in a certain sense, this situation has reached our days, in the 21^st century,  “there is not a single pharmacy, there is no toilet paper, no sanitary napkins, there is nothing at all”, says Orlando Cartagena Lagar, Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed republic of Annobón, resident in Spain.

In 1979, Teodoro Obiang Nguema staged a coup d'état and, in 2025, is still in power, becoming Africa's longest-serving dictator. His government, considered one of the most corrupt in the world, enjoys international impunity thanks to the enormous oil reserves exploited by European and US companies.

According to Orlando Cartagena, during each electoral farce, government agents go through neighborhood after neighborhood in Annobón, taking down the names of the people and registering them as voters of the single party, that is their way of participating in the “elections”. The inhabitants of the island do not even have identification cards, and their supposed representatives in the parliament are handpicked by the regime.

Self-declared independence

The Spanish colonizers humiliated and mistreated the colonized peoples of these territories, but many years after Spain left, the Obiang regime, favoring his people the Fang to be part of the collaborationist administration and army of his dictatorship, continues to enslave, mistreat and humiliate the Anonbonese population with the same cruelty and disdain as the white colonists.

Faced with this situation, on July 9, 2022, the Annoboneses living in Spain proclaimed the unilateral independence of the island, with the support of their compatriots on the island and those in exile. Orlando Cartagena was appointed Prime Minister. In 2023, Orlando and the rest of the Transitional government team (their republic has not yet been recognized by any country or international body) formed the political party Ambô Legadu.

Using the structure of the party, Orlando and his comrades organize protests, travel, fight to make themselves visible, and do everything they can so that the international community recognizes them and helps them to escape from the tyranny of the Obiang clan.

On March 22, they gathered in front of the Spanish Congress of Deputies to denounce and demand the release of 38 Annobonese citizens kidnapped since July 2024, held in the regime's prisons, whose families have been left without a livelihood.

They ask for support from Spain because, after all, it is the one who created the country to which they are obliged to belong, “If Spain had given independence to the territories it had, Annobón would be independent, in whatever way. But we are annexed to a dictatorship that enslaves us and our situation is critical. We need Spain to take the step of recognizing that we are a people pending decolonization”, said Orlando.