The Way to Mecca. Spanish State Sponsorship of Muslim Pilgrimage (1925-1972)

The sponsorship of pilgrimage to Mecca by European colonial powers in the 19th and 20th centuries contributed to transforming the hajj into the global phenomenon it is today. Spain also promoted Muslim pilgrimage from its zone of the Moroccan Protectorate, tentatively at first, and then more purposefully from 1937 onwards, continuing its sponsorship into the early 1970s, years after Morocco’s independence. Intensive study of administrative documentation from the Spanish Protectorate allows the reformulation of the sponsorship’s established chronology (from 1937 to 1956). It also shows the dual intent concealed behind its promotion: first, as propaganda aimed at the interior of the Moroccan territory being administered; and second, as a tool for the external promotion of a political regime in need of support to escape its international isolation. The pilgrimage’s sponsorship is seen as part of the general framework of managing Muslim rituals enacted by the Spanish government to deactivate their potential mobilising capacity.