A New Convivencia

This chapter looks at Spanish administration of northern Morocco after the Rif War. As the physical border between Spain and Morocco disintegrated, Spanish colonial administrators looked for ways to promote “Hispano-Moroccan brotherhood” while preserving religious, social, and sexual boundaries between Moroccan Muslims, Jews, and Spanish settlers. While much scholarship in this area has been dedicated to exposing the Spanish colonial rhetoric of brotherhood to be a ruse, this chapter takes seriously the notion that the Spanish colonial administration attempted to distinguish itself from its French counterpart—even to the point of weakening the positions of the sovereign Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla. It aimed to demonstrate greater respect for local customs and traditions and to elevate the zone’s Muslim “caliph” to the status of sovereign, although in other ways its practices resembled the French model.