The history of Western Sahara is as contested as its territory. While repositioning the issue of the exploitation of phosphate in the conflict for Western Sahara, this article focuses on the essential role that these mines have played in the construction of the Sahrawi identity and political community. The emergence of a working class in mining cities, and the links forged between the miners and the pro-independence resistance, make it possible to understand the formation and crystallization of a political identity whose acts of sabotage in the mines have been founding events. These events’ memory remains active, even today, in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. This article aims to show how miners and the mining context have played a central role in the way in which the Sahrawi political identity has been shaped in its claims to sovereignty.