Against the backdrop of the recent crisis surrounding the occupied cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and the fierce and unjustified political and media reactions that followed, particularly from radical circles in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, which seized upon the situation either to attack Morocco or to settle domestic political scores by portraying it as an “existential threat,” a more appropriate and cooperative course of action would have been to examine the reasons behind the crisis and engage in a responsible discussion. At the forefront of these issues lies Europe’s selective approach to its policies and its reluctance to assume its responsibilities under the Moroccan-European partnership, particularly with regard to migration.
Morocco’s response, issued on Monday, 3 August, by a government source, was firm and unequivocal. It stressed that Morocco “is neither Europe’s policeman nor its guardian,” but rather “a sovereign partner, not a subcontractor” in migration management, while also expressing clear concern over the political and media exploitation of the crisis. Yet this moment extends beyond the immediate crisis. The media uproar and political exploitation it revealed offer an opportunity to reflect on the historical and intellectual roots that continue to shape such narratives today, and on the images through which Morocco has historically been represented in the Spanish imagination and, in some manifestations, within the broader European imagination as well.
Morocco in the Spanish imagination
From this perspective, one may return to a number of literary and artistic works, as well as historical episodes, that reveal, to varying degrees, the nature of the representations constructed around Morocco and Moroccans, and the ways in which these images oscillated between respect and admiration on the one hand, and apprehension or hostility on the other, depending on the political contexts Spain experienced since the formation of the modern state under Ferdinand and Isabella. Revisiting these representations is not intended merely to evoke the past for its own sake, but rather to help us understand the historical and cultural backgrounds whose echoes remain present in certain contemporary discourses.
And while the image of the Moroccan in Europe took different forms depending on historical periods and intellectual currents, the roots of these representations can be traced back to the Middle Ages. In troubadour poetry, for instance, a sombre image of the Moroccan often predominated, shaped by the context of the Reconquista and the religious and political mobilisation that accompanied it. Other works, by contrast, offer a more nuanced picture, as in the Cantigas de Santa María of King Alfonso X, where the image of the Moroccan changes according to the context in which he appears. These works are also remarkable for the clear influence of Moroccan music in some of their melodies, within a framework of cultural interaction that did not, at the same time, prevent the continued presence of the idea of the “Reconquista” as one of the political foundations of Castile at the time. A broader timeline of Moroccan-Spanish relations offers further context on this long and often contradictory relationship.
Another example can be found in Elizabethan drama, which was likewise influenced by the Moroccan presence in Europe, particularly through Moroccan embassies that attracted the attention of European courts. The Moroccan character appeared in the works of Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and others in a variety of forms: at times presented as the noble knight, and at other times in a more complex form, reflecting European society’s perceptions and contradictions towards this “other” arriving from the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Such images cannot be separated from the political and cultural contexts that produced them, and they often reveal a degree of admiration intertwined with historical rivalry rather than a single, fixed image.
By contrast, certain memoirs, autobiographical accounts and official reports offer a more direct portrayal of Moroccans, often depicting them as dignified, courteous and well-mannered. This can be seen, for example, in John Evelyn’s memoirs, where he discusses the Moroccan ambassador Mohamed Ben Haddu during his visit to England in 1681, as well as in a letter written by Colonel Edward Sackville, commander of the British troops in Tangier during its brief occupation, to the Committee for the Affairs of Tangier in January of the same year, reflecting on his experience with the Moroccans, Sackville wrote: “But my lords, I think I may modestly say that I have had more experience of them in both war and peace, and I must honestly affirm that I believe this underestimation of them has been greatly prejudicial to His Majesty’s service.”
These testimonies stand, to a large extent, apart from the literary or symbolic image and come closer to describing the people and events as witnessed by their authors. Yet this more realistic portrayal never achieved the same prominence as literary and artistic works, which were often more readily inclined to use the Moroccan as a symbolic figure serving political or religious perceptions, particularly at a time when events such as the Battle of Ksar el-Kebir held a prominent place in the European memory.
The Moor between admiration and fear
The Moorish novel in Spain, which flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, offered a different image of the Moroccan, marked by a greater degree of nobility and romance. Yet this literary transformation did not necessarily imply a corresponding change in reality. At the very moment when the “Moor” appeared in literature as the honourable knight, the Inquisition continued to persecute Muslims and Moriscos within Spain.
This contradiction becomes perhaps clearer in light of the argument advanced by José Antonio Maravall, who maintained that the image of the “Moor” was not tied to religion alone, but also to the fact that he represented a competing political presence. As long as the “Moor” embodied an independent political entity, he continued to be perceived as an adversary. Once that political presence had disappeared, it became possible to recast him in a more romantic and less threatening image, which helps explain part of the transformation that the Moorish novel underwent during that period.
This became particularly evident after the fall of Granada, when the “Moor” no longer represented a political power competing with the emerging Spanish state. He could therefore be invoked in literature as a noble or heroic figure without posing a challenge to the authority or political identity then taking shape. In this sense, the Moorish novel offers a revealing example
of the way in which the image of the Moroccan changed whenever his position within the Spanish political imagination changed.
It should also be noted that Morocco’s presence in the Spanish imagination was not confined to literature and art, but extended into Spanish political discourse in the twentieth century. In his essay “Spain: The Germans against the Barbarians”, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, one of the most zealous nationalist leaders, argued that the Reconquista was not merely a recovery of territory, but the moment in which the unified Spanish state and its political identity were formed. From this perspective, he continued to invoke it as the historical reference from which Spain derived its mission and unity, revealing the persistence of this legacy within certain currents of modern Spanish nationalism.
Primo de Rivera thus represented one of the currents that reinterpreted this historical legacy within a new political context. From here, one can understand how Morocco continued, in certain Spanish nationalist discourses, to be present as more than a geographical neighbour, but rather as an element that, at different moments, was used to help define Spanish identity and mobilise the collective imagination.
Literature as a mirror
To understand this more fully, and the way in which these political ideas reverberated across the cultural and artistic sphere, we can turn to two works that embody, each in its own way, this oscillation in the Spanish view of Morocco and Moroccans. The first, widely known in literary circles, is Cartas Marruecas (Moroccan Letters) by José Cadalso, regarded by a number of scholars as one of the earliest works of a political character in modern Spanish literature. The second is the painting “Saint Ferdinand Receiving an Embassy from the King of Fez” by Diego Sánchez Sarabia, which presents a different image of the Moroccan, but one no less revealing than Cadalso’s work.
Despite their differences, both works reveal an important dimension of the representations of Morocco in the eighteenth century. While Cadalso views the Moroccan as a medium through which Spanish society can be understood and criticised, Sarabia’s painting places the Moroccan figure once again within a historical narrative that glorifies the Reconquista and its symbols. Between these two models lies one of the most striking characteristics of the Spanish imagination of Morocco: respect and admiration on the one hand, and the continued evocation of historical rivalry on the other.
This idea becomes even clearer when we trace other episodes in modern Spanish history, in which Morocco remained present whenever questions of borders, sovereignty or identity returned to the forefront. From the occupied Melilla War of 1893, and the heated debates it provoked both within Spain and beyond, particularly through its repercussions on the Cuban Revolution and the presence of Moroccan resistance in the poetry of José Martí, to the events of 1909 and the Battle of Barranco del Lobo, and their impact on Spain’s domestic politics and on the evolving relationship between Catalonia and the Spanish state; then to the Battle of Annual in 1921; and eventually to the recovery of Tarfaya in 1958 and Sidi Ifni in 1969, followed by the Green March in 1975, Morocco repeatedly appears as a significant actor in Spanish political debate. The Battle of Annual, in particular, became one of the defining episodes in the history of Moroccan resistance and a profound trauma in Spain. These were not merely a succession of military events, but also a continued reactivation of historical images and symbols, with direct or indirect effects on Spain’s internal political life, even as these episodes repeatedly placed Morocco in the position of a state defending its sovereignty or asserting itself as a regional actor, as is only natural.
Cartas Marruecas is a distinctive epistolary work composed of ninety letters, through which Cadalso explores Spanish society from an unusual perspective. It centres on the young Moroccan Gazal, who travels throughout Spain alongside the Moroccan ambassador, using the journey as an opportunity to observe Spanish society and record his impressions in letters addressed to his Spanish friend Nuño Núñez and to the sage Ben Beley. The work emerged within the context of the interest generated by Moroccan embassies in Spain during the eighteenth century, particularly the celebrated visit of the Moroccan ambassador Ahmed bin al-Mahdi al-Ghazzal.
Through this literary construction, Cadalso offers a critical view of Spanish society, using the perspective of the “other” to raise questions about its customs, ideas and self-image. His choice of a Moroccan protagonist allowed him to step away from direct criticism and instead offer a measured critique of Spanish society from within. This was a bold choice for its time, and perhaps for this reason the work was not published in full until years after it was written, having first appeared in scattered installments.
Morocco’s role in the making of modern Spanish identity
Our interest in this work lies in the fact that it does not present the Moroccan merely as a fictional character, but gives him a central intellectual role. Gazal is not simply a witness to Spanish society; he is also a means of understanding and criticising it. Through him, Cadalso expresses a vision of relations between peoples based on dialogue and mutual understanding rather than prejudice or inherited perceptions, revealing a degree of maturity and a profound understanding of what international relations ought to be. As the characters in the work express it, Cadalso imagines a new world as a shared family, in which all human beings—not Spaniards alone—are related to one another. The decision to use a Moroccan as a mirror for Spanish society was both a bold and an intelligent choice, for Cadalso understood that a society cannot see itself clearly except through the eyes of the “distant other.”
This choice challenged many of the prevailing perceptions and assumptions in Spain at the time, and opened the way for a calmer reading of the image of the Moroccan, at a moment when the country was still searching for ways to renew itself after the aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession, divided between those who advocated reviving the past and those who believed that Spain’s future lay in scientific and cultural reform and openness to the world.
During the same period, Spanish cultural life still drew heavily, in many respects, on the symbols of the past and invoked its great historical figures. One of the clearest examples is the painting “Saint Ferdinand Receiving an Embassy from the King of Fez”, produced by Diego Sánchez Sarabia in 1760.
The painting depicts the King of Castile and León, Ferdinand III, who would later become a saint of the Catholic Church, receiving the Moroccan ambassador and his retinue, together with the gifts they had brought. It belongs to a category of works that revived key episodes of Spanish history and celebrated the symbols of the Reconquista as part of a national memory that Spain was seeking to reinforce during the eighteenth century.
The choice of Ferdinand III in this context does not appear accidental. He was one of the most prominent figures associated with Castilian expansion in al-Andalus and, over time, became a political and religious symbol whose significance extended far beyond his historical persona. He was invoked whenever there was a need to evoke an image of a united and victorious Spain. Nor is it coincidental that his canonisation was formally proclaimed in 1671, less than a century before the painting was produced, at a time when historical memory was playing an increasingly important role in shaping Spanish identity.
Although the painting was not among the most widely disseminated works, it formed part of a series of works presented in competitions organised by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando between 1753 and 1808. These works were marked by a distinctly celebratory character and sought to evoke the past as a source of legitimacy and identity at a time when Spain was redefining itself following the political transformations it had undergone.
Within this framework, the Moroccan embassy in the painting is more than a mere diplomatic episode; its meaning is shaped by the narrative in which it is situated. The Moroccan appears with visible dignity and respect, in his dress, bearing and status, yet he is also present within a scene dominated by a king who represents one of the principal figures in the symbolism of the Reconquista. The significance of the painting, therefore, lies not only in what it says about Morocco, but also in what it reveals about the way Spain chose to narrate its own history and present itself.
It is noteworthy that the painting, like Cartas Marruecas, drew on echoes of the same visit made to Spain by the Moroccan ambassador Ahmed Ben al-Mahdi al-Ghazal, on behalf of Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah 1766–1767, a visit that culminated in the signing of a peace and trade agreement and the recovery of a number of manuscripts. The visit generated considerable interest among Spanish intellectual circles and the wider public. Nor was this an isolated case. Moroccan embassies in various European capitals often attracted a high degree of curiosity and admiration, given the political and civilisational presence they represented.
This is where the paradox revealed by these works becomes apparent. The Moroccan does not always appear as the enemy, nor always as the ally, but rather in a more complex form, combining respect and admiration on the one hand and, on the other, the figure of a fierce enemy and rival. In both cases, however, he remains present as the “other” through whom Spain defines its identity and historical narrative. The image of the Moroccan in the Spanish imagination is therefore less stable than some contemporary discourses might suggest; it has changed with the times and with changing circumstances.
Perhaps this is what makes Cadalso’s work different from the others. He does not merely give the Moroccan a positive presence within his text; he makes him the bearer of the gaze through which Spanish society itself is rediscovered. Through this paradox, Cadalso invites his reader to move beyond inherited images and to recognise that understanding oneself is only possible through openness to the other—even if this is perhaps the most difficult idea to accept.
And perhaps the importance of returning to these works today lies precisely in their reminder that the image of Morocco in Spain has never been singular or fixed, but has continually taken shape according to political and cultural contexts. For this reason, many of the narratives that resurface in moments of political or diplomatic tension cannot be understood in isolation from this long legacy of shifting representations, where history meets politics and where we can discern more effective ways of understanding and dealing with those populist and extremist voices that cast their shadow over Moroccan-Spanish relations.
