Fraternal Betrayal? The Spanish Army and the Decolonization of Morocco

THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 2020, VOL. 11, NO. 2, 139–160 https://doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2020.1755579 Fraternal Betrayal? The Spanish Army and the Decolonization of Morocco Geoffrey Jensen Virginia Military Institute ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article examines the Spanish army during the decolonization of Morocco, and it explores the connection between Spanish cultural perceptions – seen most clearly in the myth of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood – and strategic and operational failures. It pays particular attention to the views of Spain’s last High Commissioner in Morocco, Lieutenant General Rafael García-Valiño, and the Franco dictatorship’s ideologue of Spanish imperialism in North Africa, the influential army officer and prolific writer Tomás García Figueras. Highlighting the diversity in outlooks within Spanish military culture, the study explores why key military africanistas did not see what was coming so that they might have prepared better for the departure process. This failure left the Spanish army in unwinnable, humiliating, and in some cases fatal predicaments, and it has had consequences that linger to this day. Colonialism; culture; decolonization; France; military; Morocco; nationalism; Spain Introduction Cultural, moral, and humanitarian arguments have long had a place beside the more traditional motives of profit, international rivalries, and power politics in fueling and sustaining imperialism. Whether expressed through evangelical zeal, the classical liberal rhetoric of the “civilizing mission,” or modern discourses of development and democratization, such cultural and ideological arguments can have considerable attraction, regardless of the more cynical purposes they may also serve. People rarely act, moreover, for one reason alone. Hence the conquistadores could earnestly contend that they were saving souls even as they sought personal fame and fortune in the Americas, and centuries later Napoleon justified his imperial wars by pointing to the benefits of centralization and modernization that his conquering armies brought with them. More recently, the overthrow of unfriendly regimes, the promotion of democratization and economic development, and the exploitation of natural resources have all served as motives for foreign military adventures, often simultaneously. The Spanish army’s so-called africanistas – a term designating the officers who promoted and took part in their country’s military expansion in the CONTACT Geoffrey Jensen VA 24450, USA. © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC jensenrg@vmi.edu Department of History, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, 140 G. JENSEN Maghreb – regarded their own actions in a similarly multifaceted fashion, and their worldview also had its seeming contradictions. Nevertheless, one aspect of the imperial vision that Spaniards applied to North Africa differed considerably from that of other European colonial powers: the concept of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood. Leading Spanish military and civilian imperialists portrayed Moroccans not as the fully-fledged “Others” typical of the European colonial military worldview in Africa, but rather as historical, cultural, and sometimes even racial brothers.1 This article examines the Spanish army’s role in and reaction to the decolonization of Morocco, with a focus on the connection between Spanish cultural perceptions of Moroccans – exemplified most dramatically by the brotherhood myth – and strategic and operational failures. In addition to helping explain how and why the Spanish military behaved as it did during this process, it offers a comparative analysis of the views and actions of Spain’s top two military officials in North Africa when Morocco became independent in 1956. The first of these influential individuals was the Spanish High Commissioner for Africa, Lieutenant General Rafael García-Valiño y Marcén. The other was Tomás García Figueras, the most important military theorist of the Spanish imperial mission in Africa, who also served as the High Commissioner’s “second in command” when the decolonization process reached a climax.2 Highlighting the diversity in outlooks within Spanish military culture, the study demonstrates not only that military culture was not as monolithic as the Franco dictatorship portrayed it, but also why key military africanistas did not see what was coming so that they might have prepared better for the departure process. This failure left the Spanish army in unwinnable, humiliating, and in some cases fatal predicaments, with consequences that linger to this day. Ultimately, this work argues that perceptions of cultural and historical affinities, symbolized so vividly by the myth of SpanishMoroccan brotherhood, impeded rational decision making. “Spanish Morocco” and the brotherhood myth The Moroccan protectorate came into existence in 1912, with France designated as “protector” of the bulk of the territory and Spain given authority over the smaller, northern area including the strategically important 1 Discussions of the concept of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood in military and civilian discourse include Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste, La ’hermandad’ hispano-marroquí. Política y religión bajo el Protectorado español en Marruecos (1912–1956) (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2003); Rocío Velasco de Castro, “La imagen del ‘moro’ en la formulación e instrumentalización del africanismo franquista,” Hispania LXXIV, no. 246 (2014): 205–36; Geoffrey Jensen, “Muslim Soldiers in a Spanish Crusade: Tomás García Figueras, Mulai Ahmed er Raisuni, and the Ideological Context of Spain’s Moroccan Soldiers,” in Colonial Soldiers in Europe, 1914–1945: Aliens in Uniform in Wartime Societies, eds. Eric Storm and Ali Al Tuma (Oxford: Routledge, 2016), 182–206 and Irene González González, “’La ‘hermandad hispano-árabe’ en la política cultural del franquismo (1936–1956),” Anales de Historia Contemporánea 3 (2007): 183–97. 2 Shannon E. Fleming, “Decolonization and the Spanish Army, 1940–76,” in A Military History of Modern Spain: From the Napoleonic Era to the International War on Terror, eds. Wayne H. Bowen and José E. Álvarez (Praeger: Westport, Conn., 2007), 126. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 141 Mediterranean coast. Establishing control of its zone was a slow and formidable challenge for the Spanish army. Most notably, in 1921 it suffered the largest defeat of any colonial force in twentieth-century Africa when Riffian soldiers under the leadership of Muḥammad bin ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Khatṭ ābī ̣ (generally known in the West as Abd al-Krim) attacked the advancing Spaniards near Annual (Anwāl), inflicting over 12,000 casualties in around three weeks.3 The Spanish military would not recover the lost territory and gain full control of its zone of the protectorate until 1927. From then until Moroccan independence, however, the occupation was a largely successful enterprise from a Spanish military perspective. Before, during, and after the “pacification” process, the zone remained the principal operational theater of the Spanish army, except during the complicated parenthesis of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). In the mid-1950s, around 66,800 Spanish military personnel were stationed in North Africa, of whom 26,600 served in the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, with the remaining 44,200 in the protectorate itself.4 “Spanish Morocco” also functioned as a prominent ideological pillar of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who had first made a name for himself as a young officer in North Africa, where his public statements and actions fueled Spanish imperial pretensions. His combat feats and skills at garnering public attention while in Morocco turned him into a well-known figure in Spain and propelled his rapid rise in rank. During and after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), his dictatorship, with its orientalist “Moorish Guard” and championing of Spanish military-africanista values, propagated a traditionalist vision of Spain’s supposed historical mission and destiny in North Africa.5 Thus, the africanistas joined the military and the Church in providing crucial support for Francoism. Overall, the importance of Morocco for the military – in practical as well as ideological terms – was greater than for any other institution or social group in Spain. Hence when independence finally came, the experience was especially devastating for the Spanish army. Spain’s army officers, like so many of their counterparts from other European colonial powers, were caught mentally unprepared for the loss of empire. Their departure from the Spanish zone of the Moroccan protectorate beginning in 1956 filled many with the same feelings of betrayal and 3 The casualty figure of 12,214 killed, missing, wounded, taken prisoner, or deserted includes 7,975 Spaniards (peninsulares); the rest on the Spanish side were the so-called “indigenous troops,” or North Africans incorporated into the Spanish forces. Julio Albi de la Cuesta, En torno a Annual (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2016), 450. For an overview of the historiography of the Rif War and the political and cultural functions memories of the conflict have since served, see C. E. Pennell, “How and Why to Remember the Rif War (1921–2021),” Journal of North African Studies 22, no. 5 (2017): 798–820. 4 Fleming, “Decolonization,” 128. Similar figures in Jesús Albert Salueña, “Repliegue del Ejército español de la Zona Norte del Protectorado Marroquí (31 de abril de 1956–31 de agosto de 1961),” Anales de Historia Contemporánea 23 (2007): 201 and Miguel Platón, who divides them by rank in Hablan los militares. Testimonios para la historia (1939–1996) (Barcelona: Planeta), 217. 5 On the creation of Franco’s africanista image and identity, see Antonio Cazorla Sánchez, Franco: The Biography of the Myth (London: Routledge, 2014), especially 13–39. 142 G. JENSEN humiliation that officers of other imperial forces experienced in similar situations. In addition, the Spaniards suffered from especially ill-judged political decisions and poor military leadership, planning, and execution during their departure from Morocco. It did not help, moreover, that France’s unilateral decision to give up the protectorate had taken Spain by surprise, forcing Madrid to follow suit.6 But in spite of the circumstances, the Spanish officer corps as a whole remained remarkably quiet and loyal to Madrid during the process of decolonization. Any possible outcry from the Spanish settlers, who were dwarfed in number by their French counterparts in the Maghreb but fulfilled an important role justifying the Spanish “mission” there, also failed to materialize.7 The shock of Moroccan decolonization for the Spanish army was exacerbated by the mishaps of the military withdrawal, during which Spanish soldiers and their officers received few instructions or explanations from their leaders. Ordered to remain in barracks, Spanish military personnel witnessed erstwhile collaborators lynched, while the Moroccans serving in the Spanish armed forces deserted in increasing numbers. When Spanish colonels contacted their superiors desperate to respond, they were told to await instructions that seldom came.8 Not long thereafter, most Spanish soldiers and their officers soon found themselves living in crowded barracks on the peninsula, Ceuta, or Melilla, without the benefits of the colonial lifestyle and accompanying pay bonuses of Moroccan service. The so-called “forgotten war” of Ifni the following year only served to heighten the general sense of Spanish failure. Upon Moroccan independence, Spain first intended to retain control of “Spanish West Africa,” which consisted of the so-called Spanish Sahara (Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro, or Oued Edhahab) and the Ifni territory to its north, which ran along the Atlantic coast between the western French zone of the protectorate and the Spanish Sahara. After Morocco gained its independence, however, the selfstyled Liberation Army, made up of anti-colonial militias, attacked French 6 María Concepción Ybarra Enríquez de la Orden, España y la descolonización del Magreb. Rivalidad hispanofrancesa en Marruecos (Madrid: UNED, 1998), 266–68, 252, 256. Juan B. Vilar, “La descolonización española en África,” in La política exterior de España en el siglo XX, eds. Javier Tusell, Juan Avilés, and Rosa Pardo (Madrid: UNED and Biblioteca Nueva, 2000), 398. 7 Platón, Hablan los militares, 213–215. On the propaganda role of Spanish settlers in the protectorate, see Jesús Marchán Gustems, “Marruecos como espacio agrícola. La propaganda colonialista, una herramienta para legitimar la ocupación del espacio agrario marroquí,” in Los Lugares de la Historia, ed. José Manuel Aldea Celada (Salamanca: AJHIS, 2013), 1421–40. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs put the total number of Spaniards living in Morocco in the mid-1950s at 200,000, including 40,000 in the international city of Tangiers, some 100,000 in the Spanish zone, and some 60,000 in the French zone of the protectorate. There were also many nationalized Moroccans living in Spain. Ybarra Enríquez de la Orden, España, 253 n.27. 8 Gabriel Cardona, Franco y sus generales. La manicura del tigre (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2001), 170. Cardona was a career officer in the Spanish army during the Franco dictatorship and thereafter as well as a leading military historian in Spain. On the mishaps of the Spanish military withdrawal, see ibid., 168–73 and Ybarra, España, 277–8. For a considerably less critical account of the withdrawal, see Platón, Hablan los militares, 213–5, 222–3. Fleming, “Decolonization,” 123–8 has an overview of the withdrawal in its political, military, and diplomatic context. Salueña, “Repliegue,” 199–217, contains maps and information on the logistical and organizational aspects of the withdrawal. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 143 outposts in Mauritania and Algeria. In the absence of clear direction from Madrid and without sufficient resources of its own, the Spanish military at first allowed Liberation Army units to move across its territory with relative impunity, although it did share intelligence about these movements with the French. Then, the Liberation Army turned on the Spaniards, thereby sparking the Ifni War of 1957–1958.9 Admittedly, from the Spanish perspective this conflict featured heroic moments and some noteworthy tactical achievements.10 All the same, the bottom line is that the Liberation Army pushed the Spaniards practically to the sea and caused Spain to lose all of Ifni except a pocket along the coastal town of Sidi Ifni. To add insult to injury, the Spanish High Commission itself had facilitated the buildup of the Liberation Army by allowing it to establish a base at Nador, a town just outside the Spanish city of Melilla on the North African Mediterranean coast.11 Not only did the Spaniards suffer from this ill-advised decision aimed against the French but, during the fighting in Ifni and the Sahara, a lack of sufficient manpower, modern weaponry, and supplies seriously hindered Spanish operations. Although the Franco dictatorship had recently received material and financial aid from the Americans through the 1953 US-Spanish Pact of Madrid, the agreement did the Spanish forces little good at the time. Well aware of the strategic benefits of good relations with the Alaouite dynasty, Washington set limits on the possible Spanish employment of US weapons against Morocco, whose independence it had tacitly supported.12 Thus, during Moroccan decolonization not only did the Spanish military lose its primary theater of operations, but it also suffered from a lack of proper planning and, in Ifni, it failed to achieve what is supposed to be the main task of armies: winning wars. Although a joint French-Spanish force subsequently succeeded in clearing the Liberation Army forces from the Spanish Sahara, on its own the Spanish army had failed to prevent Morocco from taking a significant portion of Spanish-ruled territory on Morocco’s southern frontier. In 1958, Spain officially relinquished the socalled Tarfaya (Cape Juby) Strip between Sidi Ifni and the Spanish Sahara to Morocco, in spite of the Franco government’s previously stated belief that Morocco had no interest in the area and Madrid’s subsequent position that Rabat first needed to demonstrate that it had the Liberation 9 Mariano Fernández-Aceytuno, Ifni y Sáhara. Una encrucijada en la historia de España (Dueñas, Spain: Simancas, 2001), 418–24, 438–41, 551. 10 Carlos Canales Torres and Miguel del Rey Vicente, Breve Historia de la Guerra de Ifni-Sáhara (Madrid: Nowtilus, 2010); Fernández-Aceytuno, Ifni y Sáhara. 11 Cardona, Franco, 162. 12 Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla, “Coordenadas de la asistencia militar norteamericana al franquismo en los años cincuenta: entre el deseo y la realidad,” Ayer 116, no. 4 (2019): 43–44; Cardona, Franco, 186–191; Ángel Viñas, En las garras del águila. Los pactos con Estados Unidos de Francisco Franco a Felipe González (1945–1995) (Barcelona: Crítica, 2003), 340. 144 G. JENSEN Army under control.13 The fighting in Ifni and the Sahara cost Spain 852 casualties, including nearly 200 deaths, and fueled dissatisfaction among lower-ranking officers with their more senior colleagues, whose professional competence they increasingly questioned.14 The operational failures of the Moroccan withdrawal and the subsequent Ifni War were an outgrowth of the strategic miscalculations of the political leadership and the Spanish army high command, which had promoted indigenous resistance to French rule without grasping that a French departure would inevitably force the Spaniards to leave too.15 Not only did the Spanish army fail to plan politically and operationally for decolonization, but it shared García-Valiño’s psychological unpreparedness for what happened. The loss of the protectorate was thus a particularly severe shock to Spanish military culture: the account of two cadets at the military academy in Zaragoza burning a portrait of Franco in reaction to the demise of “Spanish Morocco” demonstrates how badly decolonization went over.16 Why, then, was there no outcry for “responsibilities,” a common response to military and political disasters in Spain?17 What explains the absence of public protests from the officer corps over the withdrawal from Morocco and the human losses and other misfortunes suffered during the subsequent IfniSahara operations? And why did the Spanish military acquiesce without protest to the continuance of technical and administrative assistance to Morocco during this period, even as the Liberation Army – with its increasingly visible ties to the new Moroccan state – was taking Spanish lives?18 To answer these questions, one needs to look beyond the political context of the dictatorship, which admittedly used censorship and other means of repression to stifle public debate while privileging loyalty over merit in promotions, and consider the ideological underpinnings of the decisions by key figures behind the political-military strategies. One cannot understand Spain’s policies and actions during this period without analyzing the cultural perceptions that underlay them. The most distinctive aspect of these perceptions is the notion of SpanishMoroccan (and the closely related idea of Spanish-Arabic) brotherhood, which had a prominent place in Spanish civilian and military literature 13 Antonio Marquina Barrio, España en la política de seguridad occidental 1939–1986 (Madrid: Ediciones Ejército, 1986), 704. 14 Cardona, Franco, 195. 15 For a masterful, extensive political and diplomatic history of Spanish decolonization in North Africa and the Spanish-French rivalry there, see Ybarra Enríquez de la Orden, España. 16 Mike Elkin, “Franco’s Last Stand: An Analysis of Spanish Foreign Policy Regarding Moroccan Independence in 1956,” International Journal of Iberian Studies 17, no. 2 (2004), 67; Cardona, Franco, 170. 17 For example, the language of “responsibilities” pervaded public outcry following the military debacles of 1898 and 1921 as well as the terrorist train bombings of March 11, 2004 in Madrid. Focusing on an earlier period, Carolyn P. Boyd highlights the prominent place of “responsibilities” in Spanish political discourse in “‘Responsibilities’ and the Second Spanish Republic 1931–6,” European History Quarterly 14 (1984): 151–82. 18 On the Spanish military’s contributions to the creation, organization, and training of the Moroccan armed forces during the period after independence, see Platón, Los militares hablan, 221–3. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 145 about Morocco and the “Arab world” in general. This concept shared some characteristics with other colonialist ideologies. Most notably, it too rested on the widespread, longstanding trope of the responsibility of ostensibly more advanced and “civilized” Europeans to help the peoples of conquered lands develop their economies, societies, and cultures to their full potential. But unlike the French and most other Europeans in Africa, the Spaniards did not find it so easy to make clear-cut racist (or racialist) arguments about the Maghrebi peoples whose territory, society, and cultures they sought to “civilize,” “develop,” and “modernize.” Regardless of the undeniable existence of paternalism, prejudices, and some racism in Spanish military culture, perceptions of shared history, culture, geography, and ethnicity with Muslim North Africa were also unavoidable components of Spanish identity. This was true even for many of the Spaniards who regarded their own country as far more modern and civilized than Morocco. Spain’s inability to extract material benefits from its zone of the protectorate and the pervasive poverty in the Rif only reinforced the tendency to emphasize the ideological component of the Spanish imperial project in the Maghreb over liberal arguments of economic development.19 The Spanish imperial ideology in North Africa thus differed from that of such European powers as France, even if Spain was hardly the only colonial power to regard its colonial project as exceptional.20 Cultural perceptions, nationalist realities, and the Spanish military departure from Morocco When General José Enrique Varela died in March 1951, his successor as Spain’s High Commissioner in Africa, García-Valiño, perfectly embodied the official Francoist africanista worldview. A firm believer in Spain’s supposed historic mission in North Africa, as a young officer García-Valiño had participated enthusiastically in the Rif War, convinced that Spain would 19 Mimoun Aziza, La sociedad rifeña frente al Protectorado español de Marruecos (1912–1956) (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2003), 254. By the early 1950s, however, more modern, Cold War-influenced arguments of economic development and modernization theory had found a place in some Francoist justifications for colonialism in North Africa. See Geoffrey Jensen, “The Peculiarities of ‘Spanish Morocco’: Imperial Ideology and Economic Development,” Mediterranean Historical Review 20, no. 1 (2005): 80–101. 20 In “Spanish-Maghribi (Moroccan) Relations Beyond Exceptionalism: A Postcolonial Perspective,” Journal of North African Studies 24, no. 1 (2019): 111–33; Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla and Carlos Cañete rightly point out that an insistence in the exceptional character of a country’s imperialist endeavors is common to colonialist discourse and was thus not unique to the Spanish africanistas. They also draw attention to the troublesome persistence of the brotherhood myth and other colonialist tropes in academic and other writings about the history of Spanish colonialism in the Maghreb, and they call for the incorporation of a more postcolonial approach to writings about the subject. Yet, they fail to provide evidence that the SpanishMoroccan brotherhood myth in particular had its equivalent elsewhere. Moreover, while it is true that exceptionalist arguments can serve to obscure or even excuse unpleasant realities in the name of nationalist history, to negate on principle the role of national, political, or cultural characteristics in shaping colonial behavior also has its dangers. (Interestingly, none other than Edward Said described the Spanish case as a “remarkable exception” to European orientalism in general, as Fernández Parrilla and Cañete themselves admit. Quoted in ibid., 121.) 146 G. JENSEN have the opportunity to expand its territorial holdings in Morocco when the First World War ended.21 Although these grandiose hopes remained unfulfilled, by the late 1920s the Spanish military gained control of the Spanish zone of the Moroccan protectorate, notwithstanding some noteworthy setbacks along the way. During the Spanish Civil War of the following decade, García-Valiño received praise for his leadership of Carlist units, although he also became known for his willingness to expend his soldiers’ lives in pursuit of victory.22 His triumphant role in the brutal winter battle of Teruel (1937–1938) made him one of the dictator’s favorites for years to come. Indeed, his status as a darling of the regime revealed itself after the Civil War, when he somehow managed to obtain the General Staff Diploma without completing the requisite long and arduous course of studies. Thereafter, he became head of the Central General Staff, although he then abruptly lost that position when the military staff structure was reorganized. All the same, he managed to redeem himself in Franco’s eyes after his apparent professional fall, as he subsequently became Spain’s High Commissioner in Morocco (the Spanish version of the French Resident-General).23 In this position he would oversee one of the last chapters in Spanish imperial history. García-Valiño embarked upon his ill-fated stint as High Commissioner by offering Spanish support to militant Moroccan nationalists operating in the French zone of the protectorate. Not without reason, the French considered the Spanish tolerance of the Moroccan nationalists, some of whom were granted political asylum, to be so excessive as to pose a danger to the stability of the protectorate. Although Spanish attempts to demonstrate relative tolerance toward the Moroccan nationalists extended back to the 1930s, at this point Spanish friendliness toward them, like most of Madrid’s policy decisions regarding the protectorate then, stemmed primarily from a desire to undermine France – especially in the eyes of the United States.24 Under García-Valiño, the Spanish zone’s authorities played their part by allowing the Moroccan nationalists to disseminate their views publicly – even via the Spanish government’s Radio Tetuán – to a degree that would have been unthinkable in the French zone. Moreover, when Moroccan nationalists from the French sector sought refuge in the Spanish zone to the north, the High Commissioner not only allowed them to enter the Spanish territory, but he 21 Cardona, Franco, 143. Jorge M. Reverte, El arte de matar. Cómo se hizo la guerra civil española (Barcelona: RBA, 2009), 206, 247, 270–71. 23 Cardona, Franco, 143. 24 Ybarra Enríquez de la Orden, España, 16; Aziza, La sociedad rifeña, 258; Elkin, “Franco’s Last Stand,” 73. Examples from the 1930s of Spanish authorities publicly expressing positive and tolerant views of Moroccan nationalists include the remarks by High Commissioner Manuel Rico Avello quoted in Gaceta de Melilla, Nov. 5, 1934, and in Telegrama del Rif, March 24, 1934. Sasha D. Pack offers an overview of the vicissitudes of the Franco regime’s position on Moroccan independence in The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Modern Hispano-African Borderland (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), 251–56. 22 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 147 ordered the army and police to block the pursuing French forces at the border. Under García-Valiño, Spain also supported Riffians just over the border who rose up against the French, and he provided the Moroccans with funds and old weapons from Spanish armories.25 When, in November 1952, the French replaced Sultan Mohammed Ibn Yusef with Mohammed Ben Arafa, García-Valiño refused to recognize the authority of the latter. García-Valiño ordered that Friday prayers continue to invoke the deposed sultan’s name, and went so far as to suggest elevating the status of the Khalif (the top Moroccan authority in the Spanish zone) to that of a sultan – a move that would have questioned the basic legal structure of French protectorate.26 For a time, Moroccan nationalists returned the favor by causing fewer problems for Spanish authorities than for their French counterparts. Thus, in early 1954, the Khalif took part in what the Spaniards portrayed as a Moroccan ceremony of public appreciation for Spain’s posture and sympathy to Moroccan interests.27 But the lack of Moroccan anti-colonial actions in the Spanish zone then stemmed at least in part from the nationalists’ knowledge that France represented a far greater obstacle than Spain to their final goal of independence. In the meantime, they could take advantage of the relative freedom of the Spanish zone.28 García-Valiño and other leading military figures were apparently incapable of grasping the longterm implications of their cozy relations with the Moroccan nationalists, and this reality would inevitably harm the Spanish position in North Africa. Thus, Spanish authorities continued to take an explicitly anti-French course, and expressed their faith that the spirit of “Spanish-Arab brotherhood” would overcome the reality of rising international anti-colonialism.29 There were some ostensibly positive aspects of the Spanish decision to act against the French. The support for the Alaouite dynasty was consistent with longstanding Francoist policy, and it aligned with García-Valiño’s aim of sabotaging French rule in Morocco, possibly contributing to some 6,700 acts of violence against the French and their collaborators that took around 2,700 lives.30 In addition, Franco may have believed that by discrediting French 25 J. P. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of Moroccan Nationalism 1912–1944 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 56; Cardona, Franco, 147, 159–60; María Rosa de Madariaga, Marruecos, ese gran desconocido. Breve historia del protectorado español (Madrid: Alianza, 2013), Chapter 7; Fernández-Aceytuno, Ifni, 398–99. 26 Fleming, “Decolonization,” 126; José Luis Villanova and Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste, “El jalifa y el Majzén del Protectorado español en Marruecos. Exaltación simbólica de un poder tutelado,” Ayer 108, no. 4 (2017): 252–53. 27 Villanova and Mateo Dieste, “El jalifa,” 252–53; Fernández-Aceytuno, Ifni, 399. 28 José Luis Neila Hernández, La segunda república española y el mediterráneo (Madrid: Dilema, 2006), 197–209; Jean Wolf, Les secrets du Maroc espagnol. L’epopee d’Abd-el-Khaleq Torres (Paris and Casablanca: Balland-Eddif. 1994), 179; Cardona, Franco, 143. 29 Eloy Martín Corrales and Josep Pich Mitjana, “Presentación. La descolonización frustrante,” in España frente a la independencia de Marruecos, eds. Eloy Martín Corrales and Josep Pich Mitjana (Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra, 2017), 19; Josep Pich Mitjana, “La revista Mundo y la descolonización del norte de África,” in ibid., 97–8; Cardona, Franco, 143–47; Fernández-Aceytuno, Ifni, 399; Villanova and Mateo Dieste, “El jalifa,” 252–53. 30 Pack, Deepest Border, 254; Fleming, “Decolonization,” 126. 148 G. JENSEN policies he could convince Washington to favor Spain over France as a partner in the region. He also wanted to impress the Arab leaders whom he hoped would help his semi-ostracized regime gain more acceptance on the international stage.31 Moreover, the fact that in 1956 the sultan whom the French deposed, Ibn Yusef, would rise again and become the first king of independent Morocco (as Muhammed V) suggests that García-Valiño was right not to support the earlier French decision to depose him. Just months before Moroccan independence, the prominent military africanista Tomás García Figueras, a long-time and influential friend of Franco, praised García-Valiño’s divergence from the French position in an article published anonymously in the magazine Mundo, whose pages regularly transmitted views from the highest levels of the Franco dictatorship’s foreign policy establishment.32 In spite of this ostensible praise from García Figueras, however, the antiFrench actions proved too successful for Spain in the end – disastrously so. The French decided to abandon the protectorate, and their departure would leave the Spaniards in an unsustainable situation, with their Moroccan “brothers” now insisting that Madrid follow suit and depart as well. The initial failure of García-Valiño and others to believe France’s pledge to cede the protectorate would prevent Madrid from reaping the potential benefits of its past support of the Moroccan nationalists.33 As Shannon E. Fleming writes, Spanish policy toward Morocco had become “essentially reactive” by early 1956, with the Moroccans seizing and maintaining the initiative from that point on.34 As Moroccan decolonization drew nearer, the leading Spanish military africanistas differed in their appraisals of the posture they believed Spain needed to take. Given García Figueras’s position as “the most eminent theorist of [Spanish] africano-militarismo,” a comparison of his views on decolonization with those of High Commissioner García-Valiño is especially revealing, as it sheds light on the contradictions and nuances of the Francoist regime during this key chapter in its history.35 First, however, it is necessary to review the intellectual and professional trajectory of García Figueras. 31 Elkin, Franco’s Last Stand, 68–69; Shannon Fleming, “North Africa and the Middle East,” in Spain in the Twentieth-Century World, ed. James Cortada (Greenwood Press, 1980), 133. 32 “Crisis de colonización,” Mundo, October–November 1955. This essay appeared as a four-part series published in October and November. A file consisting in part of clippings from the actual published article and part of the original typed manuscript is my source here. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Colección García Figueras, AFRGFC/497/10 (hereafter CGF). On the close ties between Mundo and the Spanish government, see María Dolores Algora Weber, “La conexión entre la política exterior del franquismo y la información sobre el mundo árabe a través de ’Mundo: revista semanal de política exterior y economía’ (1945–1955),” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 14 (1992): 117–34 and Pich Mitjana, “La revista Mundo,” 93–112. On Spanish press coverage of decolonization, see also Sasha D. Pack, “Decolonisation and the Press: A Path to Pluralism in Franco’s Spain (ca. 1950–1975),” in Decolonizing Europe? Popular Responses to the End of Empire, eds. Berny Sèbe and Matthew Stanard (Routledge, 2020) and Karima Aït Yahia, “La prensa franquista y la política exterior: el caso de la Guerra de Independencia de Argelia,” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 30 (2008): 293–312. 33 Larramendi, “España,” 176–78. 34 “Decolonization,” 127. 35 Madariaga, Marruecos, 291. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 149 As the principal military architect and propagandist of “Spanish Morocco,” García Figueras was a career army officer whose energetic involvement in North African affairs had begun in the early 1920s, when he began working as an interventor, a sort of Spanish version of France’s “native affairs officers.”36 The interventores, who were usually military officers, played a crucial role in Spain’s maintenance of order in its protectorate zone, carrying out and coordinating Spanish endeavors in the realms of intelligence, administration, security, local politics, civil engineering, and health care. In modern terms, their duties largely corresponded to those of the United States Army’s special forces, civil affairs, and intelligence officers today, although the interventores were much fewer in number, and their proportional influence on overall counterinsurgency and strategy were probably greater.37 The prominent position to which García Figueras had risen by the end of the Spanish Civil War manifested itself most visibly when, after the German defeat of France in 1940, he joined the delegation from the Spanish Foreign Office sent to Germany to discuss conditions for Spain’s possible entry into World War II. Subsequently, he prepared Franco for his famous meeting with Adolph Hitler at Hendaye in October 1940. There the Spanish dictator, employing the same africanista rhetoric that his advisor García Figueras had infused into military culture, tried to convince the Führer of Spain’s supposedly unique historic, cultural, and geographic qualifications to carve out an empire in the Maghreb. After Hendaye, García Figueras continued to be a close confidant of Franco and serve him loyally, and in return Franco made sure that the serving High Commissioner gave him a relatively free rein.38 After many years’ service as the principal “Native Affairs” Delegate to the Spanish High Commission (delegado de Asuntos Indígenas de la Alta Comisaría), in 1956 García Figueras was named to an inter-ministerial commission hastily formed in response to Morocco’s unexpected and sudden independence. The charge of this committee was to coordinate the Spanish departure with the new Moroccan government.39 García Figueras was also a leading cultural figure in Spain and the protectorate who devoted his life to studying Africa – especially Morocco. His heartfelt writings on the topic would earn him the praise of a wide variety of his contemporaries, including the famous Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo after 36 For more on García Figueras’ background and career, see Jensen, “Muslim Soldiers,” from which some material is taken about him and the brotherhood myth that appears here. 37 On the interventores, see José Luis Villanova Valero, Los interventores. La piedra angular del Protectorado español en Marruecos (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2006) and Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste, La ’hermandad’, especially chapters 2–4. On the differences between the French “native affairs” officers and the Spanish interventores, see David Montgomery Hart’s introduction to Emilio Blanco Izaga, Emilio Blanco Izaga: Coronel en el Rif (Melilla: Ayuntamiento de Melilla and UNED-Centro Asociado de Melilla, 1995), 41–52. 38 Gustau Nerín and Alfred Bosch, El imperio que nunca existió. La aventura colonial discutida en Hendaya (Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 2001), 128–30, 134, 233. 39 Ybarra, España, 274. 150 G. JENSEN Franco died and Spain became a democracy.40 García Figueras penned around one hundred books and pamphlets and countless periodical articles, most of which were devoted to North Africa. A tireless researcher, he amassed a considerable library and collection of documents on the topic. In 1973, he estimated that he had donated some 10,000 books, 5,000 pamphlets, 30,000 photos, and 20 volumes of miscellaneous, often unpublished items, to Spain’s National Library, where they now form the basis of the García Figueras Collection on Africa.41 On the surface, his support in the pages of Mundo for García-Valiño appears to indicate that the two men were united in their vision of Spain’s destiny in the Maghreb. If one looks more closely, however, one sees that García Figueras was not so much supporting Valiño’s reasoning as qualifying it and maybe even trying to excuse it after the fact. Indeed, a close reading indicates that the main aim of García Figueras’s article was to impel readers to accept the inevitability of decolonization, a position that contrasted markedly then from that of García-Valiño and the bulk of the Spanish officer corps. In public forums, however, García Figueras had little choice but to temper this argument. To disagree publicly with the High Commissioner or cast doubt upon the imperial vision he embraced would have been out of the question. Not only was he, like García-Valiño until after independence, a loyal Francoist, but it is doubtful that explicit criticism of his superior would have escaped censorship, even when published anonymously. More fundamentally, he was well aware that much of the Spanish army then was, as Eloy Martín Corrales and Josep Pich Mitjana write, incapable of acknowledging “the reality that Spain could not continue to rule over ‘its’ Protectorate.”42 Hence if García Figueras were to express opinions that strayed from the regime’s orthodoxy, he would have to do so carefully, without contradicting the dictatorship’s official narrative about Morocco or giving anyone the opportunity to doubt his Francoist credentials. García Figueras broached the idea of a Spanish withdrawal on the pages of Mundo, albeit anonymously, in a four-part series that appeared under the headline “Crisis of Colonization” beginning in October 1955. The first page included the following passage, which was also featured in a highlighted box: The fundamentals of colonialism are under reconsideration. The concept of colonialism has changed so much that it is no longer admissible for one people to take action over another, except with the aim of giving the latter eventual control of its own destiny. A failure to act with this aim has fanned the fires of anticolonialism … against the countries that acted as if they owned the lands they colonized. Such has 40 Jensen, “Muslim Soldiers,” 201. Francisco Amores, “Entrevista en 4 capítulos. Tomás García Figueras. 4”, ABC (Sevilla), December 15, 1973, 19 (19–21). 42 “Presentación,” 19. 41 THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 151 been the case with France, whose attitude differed considerably in this way from England, whose formerly colonized peoples are now happily part of the Commonwealth ….43 Not surprisingly, García Figueras supplemented his francophobic and rather problematic interpretation of European colonialism with the typical exceptionalist argument that noble and altruistic idealism propelled Spain’s colonial ventures, unlike those of the other powers who selfishly prioritized their own interests. Nonetheless, such common traditionalist africanista verbal trappings could only partly hide the more profound message of his article. Spanish africanistas regularly made the paternalist, vague promise that the imperial presence would end at some unspecified point in the distant future, after Spain had elevated Moroccans to the mature state in which they could finally rule themselves. Now, however, García Figueras affirmed that “colonialism in any form has reached its end” – a rather surprising statement to appear in an official Francoist publication at the time, especially when penned by a professional military man. Quoting the famous French military figure who oversaw the conquest of Morocco and then became its ResidentGeneral, Hubert Lyautey, García Figueras acknowledged that “men are not angels and colonizers less so.”44 Although he devoted considerable space to distinguishing Spanish and Portuguese colonialism from that of other Western powers, and he maintained that Spain’s relationship with Morocco had little in common with that of France, García Figueras took a crucial further step. He explicitly stated that Madrid too would have to accept that it could not maintain its current position in Morocco for much longer, although he also maintained that the exceptionalist nature of the Spanish project would make the colonial breakup easier. “In its Moroccan enterprise, Spain fortunately lacks the typical desire of colonizing nations” to conserve its colony at all costs, he claimed. Such an approach belied the unrealistic postures that key Spanish leaders, whether García-Valiño, Carrero Blanco, or Franco himself, would cling to regarding Morocco then, Equatorial Guinea about a decade later, and finally the Western Sahara. This was the case even after nearly everyone else saw the writing on the wall. “Portugal, Spain, and Morocco are destined to serve as an example of fraternal interdependence, in happy association in the service of a better humanity,” García Figueras claimed.45 Thus although he recognized the inevitability of decolonization, García Figueras still believed that the deeply-rooted ties of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood would enable Spain to maintain a special relationship with the newly independent North African 43 “Crisis de colonización,” October–November 1955, CGV. Ibid. 45 Ibid. 44 152 G. JENSEN state of the kind that France had no chance of achieving.46 After France announced its impending departure, Franco and others briefly adopted the position that they could avoid full Moroccan decolonization or at least preserve some sort of special relationship with Morocco – but their illusions would not last long. High Commissioner García-Valiño, however, held on to this unrealistic hope even longer. Not surprisingly, parts of García Figueras’s anonymous article echoed typical Francoist views, warning of the Communist threat lurking behind anticolonialism, and fiercely criticizing French foreign policy for its supposed lack of realism, while conveniently ignoring the same characteristic in many Spanish policies. García Figueras also praised his superior García-Valiño for supposedly having gained popular Moroccan support, as exemplified by the 1954 ceremony described above. Overall, however, the article gave the strong impression that major changes in the colonial world order were taking place and that Spain and its fellow authoritarian Iberian colonial power, Portugal (whose ideology of Lusotropicalism bore striking resemblances to Spanish africanismo), would not be able to maintain their imperial postures much longer.47 Significantly, the article saw publication when García-Valiño and Franco, who initially regarded French promises of independence as duplicitous, still believed that Spain could preserve its protectorate territory.48 García Figueras’s outlook, with its guarded but unmistakable recognition that Moroccan decolonization was an unavoidable reality even in the Spanish zone, was far from typical in Spanish military and civilian spheres then, whose leading voices continued to maintain that Spain would emerge from developments in the region as a dominant player. Mundo, for example, had recently published another article contending that Washington would value its relationship with Spain more fully because a French withdrawal from the protectorate would threaten American use of military bases there. In this view the United States would need a Spanish counterweight to the “insecurity” of independent Morocco.49 It is true that the French feared Washington might get closer to the Franco regime because of restrictions Paris placed on American personnel at the bases in the French protectorate. All the same, such considerations were not the main drivers of US policy, and in any case the Americans failed to disclose to the French the full details about their 46 Unsurprisingly, after the French decision to grant independence the Spanish africanistas made much out of the evidence they found of Moroccans’ apparent willingness to renounce separation from Spain in favor of a generous form of autonomy that would come out of the “true and sincere Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood” that they claimed had long existed. For example, Mohammad Ibn Azzuz Haquim, “Hacia una posible autonomía de la zona jalifiana,” Cuadernos de Estudios Africanos 30 (1955): 35–40. http://www.cepc.gob.es/ publicaciones/revistas/fondo-historico?IDR=12&IDN=1025&IDA=32320 (accessed January 18, 2020). 47 Susana Martin-Marquez writes of this idea of “Hispanotropicalism,” a term she borrows from Gustau Nerín, in Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 75, 283. 48 On the timeline of Franco and García-Valiño’s changing views, see Elkin, “Franco’s Last Stand,” 81. 49 Pich Mitjana, “Revista,” 97–98. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 153 military presence. Washington valued US Strategic Air Command’s three air bases in the French zone of the Moroccan protectorate at least as highly as the US military presence established in Spain in 1953, but the Americans were not overly concerned about the fate of these bases. Indeed, in April 1954 – fewer than two years before Moroccan independence – President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the deployment of full nuclear weaponry in Morocco (nuclear components for B-36 and B-47 bombers had arrived the previous July). In fact, nuclear weapons remained in Morocco for almost a decade after independence.50 In other ways, too, García-Valiño’s position betrayed an astonishing lack of awareness of geopolitical realities in the era of global decolonization and the Pact of Madrid. Not only was the support for anti-colonialist principles of the United Nations and even the United States well known, but it was no secret that Washington had also given some support to the forces of Moroccan independence as it strove to ensure good relations with a future independent state. The history of US-Moroccan relations extended back to the early years of the North American Republic, with Washington long considering Morocco a sovereign entity from a legal perspective. Admittedly, in the twentieth century American officials had generally given deference to French and Spanish rule there, especially during the Second World War. Nonetheless, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had also promised support for Moroccan independence at Casablanca in 1943. Washington’s consistent failure to recognize de jure the protectorate regime had in turn bolstered the Moroccan nationalists’ arguments for independence.51 In comparison to García-Valiño, García Figueras thus had a more realistic view of Spain’s possibilities in North Africa. Although he would continue to embrace the basic tenets of the Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood ideal until his death, his anonymously-penned article indicates that he knew Spain would be forced to join France in relinquishing its Moroccan territory altogether. His contribution in this important journal thus helped prepare readers psychologically to face the hitherto unthinkable: Spanish withdrawal from the protectorate. After García Figueras, but before García-Valiño, even Franco came to accept this eventuality, regardless of the persistence of specious perceptions of the caudillo’s close personal and spiritual ties to the Maghreb. Indeed, after years of cultivating the supposed “African” component of his public identity, he showed surprisingly little remorse after Spain’s departure from Morocco, basically abandoning his faithful followers who had maintained the 50 51 Viñas, Garas del águila, 312; Madariaga, Marruecos, 399. Ybarra, España, 247; Marquina Barrio, España en la política de seguridad, 699; Cardona, Franco, 146; Benjamin Rivlin, “The United States and Moroccan International Status, 1943–1956: A Contributory Factor in Morocco’s Reassertion of Independence from France,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 15, no. 1 (1982): 64–82; Miguel Hernando de Larramendi, “España ante la independencia de Marruecos. La mirada de los diplomáticos españoles,” in Martín Corrales and Pich Mitjana, eds., España, 169. 154 G. JENSEN traditional africanista colonialist outlook. Archival documents indicate that by at least February 1956 Franco had grasped the futility of the anti-French stance, which – as the reader has seen – had aimed to convince the United States that Madrid could be a valuable ally in place of Paris. In the meantime, High Commissioner García-Valiño continued to reject in a very public fashion any talk of abandoning Spain’s privileged, paternalist, and paradoxical relationship with Morocco and its peoples. Such a lack of coherence and communication within the highest levels of government characterized the Franco dictatorship’s Moroccan policies in general.52 When “abandonment” finally did occur, Franco’s image in military culture as the infallible and undisputed caudillo helped shield him against the possibility of significant, tangible resistance from the officer corps–the account of cadets destroying the Franco portrait notwithstanding. The inability or unwillingness of most Spanish officers to grasp that Franco had willingly made the rational decision to give up the protectorate was reflected in the reception of the almost-surely apocryphal story that Franco was discovered weeping over the end of the Spanish presence in Morocco as if he had “lost a son.” Given the complete lack of evidence for its veracity, the story reveals far more about those who believed and recounted it than about the reality of Franco’s feelings.53 Franco had a firmer grasp of Realpolitik than did the bulk of the officer corps, which had internalized the africanista identity and mystique that he had done so much to cultivate since his days as a young officer fighting in Morocco. The lack of a stronger reaction against the sudden forsaking of the africanista vision shows that Franco, who came to power after an attempted coup sparked the Spanish Civil War, had paradoxically created a military docility and loyalty to the political leadership unmatched in Spain during the previous two centuries. Franco’s lack of fidelity to the traditional Spanish imperialist vision for North Africa may have been shared by a small group of more realistically minded military men, but they kept their mouths shut. Hence even after influential figures such as García Figueras had accepted the inevitability of decolonization, they had scant chance of altering the general viewpoint of their colleagues or of the supreme commander in Spanish North Africa, García-Valiño. Army officers would have risked derision or worse if they had expressed such an outlook in military circles. Thus, the views long expressed by García-Valiño held the day, and it would have appeared unpatriotic to oppose them more openly, as García Figueras knew. As a result, practical military policy, planning, and operations remained largely in the hands of leaders whose misconceptions poisoned both strategy and the operational aspects of the military withdrawal. Linking tactics and 52 53 Elkin, Franco’s Last Stand, 68–69; Ybarra, passim; Larramendi, “España,” 165–168. Martín Corrales and Pich Mitjana, “Presentación,” 19. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 155 strategy, military actions at the so-called operational level of war do not take place in a vacuum. An armed force’s “operational concepts must be designed to achieve political objectives” and not just military ones, as a modern strategist writes. But the whole process depends on political leaders defining realistic goals.54 By the mid-1950s if not before, the maintenance of the colonial status was simply not a realistic strategic goal for a European power, as the dictatorships of Spain and Portugal would learn. In this case, García-Valiño adhered unrealistically to the frankly absurd expectation that the protectorate could be divided into two entirely separate political entities, with Spain’s zone continuing to exist even after the French one had dissolved. Acceptance of this view entailed underestimating the strength of proindependence and anti-Spanish feelings among the Moroccans while embracing the typical paternalist, self-serving colonial conception of grateful “natives,” a perception that the Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood myth further reinforced. The consequence of this outlook was the Spanish failure to plan for what should have been obvious. In an atmosphere in which even fundamental policy changes were not communicated among key Spanish diplomats, it is perhaps not so surprising that Franco withheld his intentions from García-Valiño and that in the end the two men clashed.55 Franco would subsequently blame García-Valiño for promoting the forces of Moroccan nationalism that came back to haunt the Spaniards, charging that his High Commissioner had failed to understand that the nationalist flames would eventually burn the Spanish zone too. Of course, Franco conveniently ignored the support that his government had lent this policy through at least 1955.56 García Figueras had played a key role in developing and disseminating the brotherhood myth. That fact made his subsequent realization that the protectorate’s days were numbered so exceptional for a Spanish officer even this late in the process of decolonization. Since before the Civil War, he had stressed the commonalities he perceived in Spaniards and Moroccans, promoted an idealized vision of convivencia, or mutual toleration between Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and portrayed the Spanish zone of the protectorate as a place where the ostensible religious toleration of medieval Toledo might thrive again. Although some conservatives had certainly espoused the use of anti-Arab rhetoric before the tens of thousands of Moroccan troops fighting on Franco’s side in the Spanish Civil War brought 54 David Jablonsky, “Strategy and the Operational Level of War. Part I,” Parameters (Spring 1987): 67. Elkin, Franco’s Last Stand, 70, 78; Ybarra Enríquez de la Orden, España. Using additional archival documents to which Ybarra did not have access, Elkin revises somewhat Ybarra’s assertion that Franco and García-Valiño’s disagreement predated 1956, with the two men pursuing distinct policies before that year. Elkin also revises slightly the chronology offered by Raanan Rein, who argues that the two men were in agreement at that time, regardless of their subsequent conflict. Raanan Rein, “In Pursuit of Votes and Economic Treaties: Francoist Spain and the Arab World, 1945–56,” in Spain and the Mediterranean since 1898, ed. Raanan Rein (London: Frank Cass, 1999), referred to in Elkin, Franco’s Last Stand, 82–3. 56 Fleming, “Decolonization,” 128. 55 156 G. JENSEN such talk to a halt, the contrasting notion of the Moroccans as “brothers” was not a wholly artificial invention either. Conveniently, Franco’s ideologues could thus incorporate these Muslim soldiers into a “Christian crusade” without as much difficulty as one might expect, and the brotherhood concept that undergirded this paradox lived on, long after the Civil War. In military culture, at least, the propaganda offensive had worked all too well, persisting right up to the eve of independence. Spanish officers had internalized the myth and other aspects of the africanista vision so much that they earnestly believed that the Moroccans would acquiesce to the continued presence of the Spaniards and the granting of a special position to them in the new Maghrebi order. If, then, one recognizes the unwavering faith of Garcia-Valiño in the official africanista vision of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood, and one acknowledges how deeply this belief was planted in Spanish military culture, then the failure to perceive the dangers of supporting anti-French Moroccan nationalism is not so difficult to understand. Simply put, García-Valiño and many others had convinced themselves that the Moroccan nationalists perceived them in a drastically different manner than they viewed their French military counterparts. Although certainly not the only factor, Spanish military cultural perceptions, which manifested themselves so vividly in the ideal of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood, had so much influence that they colored policy and military planning. This development had terrible results for Madrid and its military forces. After the shock of the events of 1956 and the Ifni War proved the fallacy of their cultural perceptions, Spanish officers predictably fell back on the familiar colonial trope of “native treachery” when describing Moroccan actions, although García Figueras himself avoided this trap. Many of these officers would soon replace Moroccans with Western Sahrawis as the objects of the brotherhood myth, arguing that the former – bolstered by a shameful deficit of strong Spanish leadership – were now oppressing the latter.57 It is worth remembering, however, that the true believers of SpanishMoroccan brotherhood did not lack concrete examples to reinforce their perceptions. The Moroccan Muslim Muhammed Ben Mizzian Ben Kassen, for instance, had risen to the rank of lieutenant general in the Spanish Army during the Franco regime, even serving as captain general of the military districts of Galicia and the Canary Islands before returning to serve his homeland after independence. He was not a “Moorish officer” (“oficial moro”) lacking the status of his Spanish counterparts; his position was neither symbolic nor a propaganda gesture. Instead, the Spanish state and its army put him in the same category as other Spanish officers, as the 57 Susan Martin-Márquez, Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 323–39; Fernández Parrilla and Cañete, “Spanish-Maghribi (Moroccan) Relations,” 118–9. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 157 frequent employment in official documents of the title “Don” before his name indicates, and he held command over very large units in Spain itself. For a former Muslim colonial subject to obtain that kind of position, which gave him command over tens of thousands of European soldiers, was unthinkable in other Western military forces. Furthermore, Moroccan nationalists had themselves long learned to cultivate the brotherhood myth when convenient, thus reinforcing the self-serving tendency of Spaniards such as García-Valiño to believe in the supposed uniqueness of their relationship with their colonial subjects. These nationalists knew how to employ the discourse Spanish authorities wanted to hear about convivencia, brotherhood, and historic ties between Spain and the “Arab world” when it suited their own interests.58 (Indeed, Moroccan and other Muslim leaders have continued to employ the brotherhood ideal when praising the supposed exceptionalism of Spanish-Moroccan ties and relations between Spaniards and Muslims in general.59) Moroccan nationalists also internalized and employed relativized visions of a shared Andalusian past.60 More recently, popular movements in two regions that continue to show considerable resistance to rule by Rabat – the Western Sahara and, to a lesser but nonetheless significant degree, the Rif – have stressed ties to Spain and Hispanic or Hispanicized culture and language in order to reject “Moroccanism” in favor of separate Sahrawi or Riffian/Amazigh identities. Some Riffians have even revived the SpanishMoroccan brotherhood discourse, albeit as a way of expressing their disapproval of the central Moroccan government.61 Of course, regardless of any adherence to the brotherhood ideal, someone less obtuse than García-Valiño might have grasped the uncomfortable reality of Moroccan decolonization’s inevitability well before 1956. García Figueras, for 58 For example, the remarks by the prominent Moroccan nationalist Abdeljalak Torres quoted in Heraldo de Madrid, Nov. 22, 1935 and in La Libertad, June 27, 1934. For similar remarks during the final period before independence, see Ibn Azzuz Haquim, “Hacia una posible autonomía” and examples cited in Madariaga, Marruecos, 400. Even during and after the independence process, Istiqlal leaders employed the “brotherhood” discourse when convenient. Ybarra Enríquez de la Orden, España, 239, and Fernández-Aceytuno, Ifni, 425. See also Eric Calderwood, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2018) and David Stenner, “Mediterranean Crossroads: Spanish-Moroccan Relations in Past and Present,” Journal of North African Studies 24, no. 1 (2019): 11. 59 For example, in the United Nations “Alliance of Civilizations” proposal sponsored by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2005. For Moroccan examples, see Fernández Parrilla and Cañete, “Spanish-Maghribi (Moroccan) Relations,” 117. 60 David Stenner, “Mediterranean Crossroads: Spanish-Moroccan Relations in Past and Present,” Journal of North African Studies 24, no. 1 (2019), 11; Eric Calderwood, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2018). 61 Yolanda Aixelà-Cabré, “Colonial Memories and Contemporary Narratives from the Rif: Spanishness, Amazighness, and Moroccaness Seen from Al-Hoceima and Spain,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 21, no. 6 (2019): 856–73 and Pablo San Martín, “’¡Estos locos cubarauis!’: the Hispanisation of Sahrawi society (… after Spain),” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 7, no. 3 (September 2009): 249–63. The head of the Spanish General Staff, General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, revealed a strikingly pro-Riffian outlook during the 1958–1959 uprising in the Rif against the central government in Rabat, which he sought to assist. The Spanish government quickly put a stop to such plans. Platón, Hablan los militares, 268–69. On Franco’s refusal to accede to Riffian pleas for assistance during the revolt, see Pack, Deepest Border, 260–61. 158 G. JENSEN example, embraced many of the myths of the Spanish imperial project in North Africa, but his views evolved before those of his superior. Moreover, anyone who held the position of High Commissioner should have developed contingency plans for a Spanish withdrawal, even if the possibility seemed remote. In other words, good old-fashioned hubris and incompetence also played roles in the mishap-laden, Spanish military withdrawal from Morocco. The same was true concerning the very nature of the Franco dictatorship, which privileged political loyalty over military merit and thereby facilitated the professional rise of someone like García-Valiño to such a high level. Other aspects of the nature of the Francoist state came into play, including censorship and other repressive mechanisms of the dictatorship that hindered public discussion of the Spanish military departure, although word of the military mishaps soon spread within the officer corps. In addition, a Spanish version of the Führerprinzip pervaded military culture, which held everything and everyone except the Caudillo himself responsible for national misfortune. Furthermore, Franco – who himself had come to power through a coup – had ironically succeeded in taming the praetorian military, making it less likely to intervene in politics than at any time in its modern history. And the contemporaneous imperial setbacks of France undoubtedly proved comforting to many Spanish officers, with the ongoing Algerian crisis in particular providing plenty of opportunities for Schadenfreude. (The Franco regime would refuse to assist Moroccan and French efforts to squelch the Rif rebellion against Rabat that occurred after independence, and it then provided assistance to the Algeria-based French military figures seeking to overthrow President Charles de Gaulle.62) Finally, Spain’s preservation of its Saharan territory preserved for the time being the sense of purpose of some of the elite units, while also facilitating the transfer of the brotherhood ideal from Moroccans to the Sahrawis. Conclusion Beyond such considerations, the brotherhood myth, which had once provided so much ideological support for Spanish imperialism in the Maghreb, influenced the course of military decolonization. Spain’s withdrawal from Morocco may have been inevitable, but with realistic expectations and proper planning it would have unfolded more smoothly and in a manner less prejudicial to Spain, whose relations with Rabat suffered for years as a result of the manner independence came about.63 Indeed, independent Morocco would often favor Paris over Madrid, much to the chagrin of the Spanish military africanistas. The complexities of postcolonial Moroccan international relations lie outside the scope of this article, 62 Ybarra, España, 239–40; Karima Aït Yahia, “España y el golpe de estado contra De Gaulle. La implicación española en el putsch de los generales, abril 1961,” Cahiers de civilisation espagnole contemporaine 10 (Spring 2013), 1–13. https://journals.openedition.org/ccec/4412?lang=es (accessed January 19, 2020). 63 Ybarra, España; Vilar, “Descolonización,” 400; Martín Corrales and Pich Mitjana, “Presentación,” 19. THE JOURNAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 159 with interests and pressures from Washington, Algeria, the Rif, and the nationalist Istiqlal party all influencing Rabat’s attitudes and actions toward Madrid and Paris. The status of Ceuta, Melilla, and above all the Western Sahara would continue to generate some friction as well.64 Nonetheless, Spain’s diplomatic inconsistencies and missteps also contributed to difficulties in postcolonial relations with Rabat, the long history of brotherhood discourse notwithstanding. Just months before independence, for example, Franco angered Moroccans and Arab nationalists elsewhere when he told the US press that Morocco was not ready for independence because it lacked the qualified people needed by a modern state.65 In the diplomatic sphere, the lack of clear signals from Madrid during the early months of 1956 frustrated leading Istiqlal figures so much that they complained that the “typical Spanish traits of pride and indecision” were hindering effective communication with the Spanish Foreign Ministry.66 Even in the relatively proSpanish Rif, locals judged the Spanish colonial endeavors as an economic failure, and to the south Moroccans blamed Spanish colonial control of the Rif area for that region’s continued underdevelopment, a perception that survives to this day.67 Above all, however, France’s economic, political, and military clout simply exceeded that of Spain. Accordingly, the postcolonial Moroccan leadership appears to have understood when soft power tools such as the brotherhood discourse – whether genuinely believed or not – needed to take a back seat to Realpolitik. Of course, one should not overlook the impact on the independence process of other manifestations of Moroccan agency, domestic distractions back in Spain, or Franco’s own changing assessments of the situation in light of French actions. Yet, Spanish army officers’ cultural perceptions also merit a place in accounts of the Spanish withdrawal and the establishment of the new Moroccan state, and they help explain the shortsighted and misguided behavior of Spanish leaders. The events of 1956 demonstrate the degree to which ideals of Hispano-Arabic and Spanish-Moroccan identity represented more than just a convenient justification for Spanish imperialism or for Franco’s use of Moroccan soldiers in the Spanish Civil War. They also made up a fundamental aspect of Spanish military culture in the Maghreb. Acknowledgments Many thanks to Shannon E. Fleming and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. 64 Pack, Deepest Border, 256–64. Ybarra, España, 243–44. 66 Quoted in Ibid., 257. 67 Aziza, Sociedad rifeña, 258, 255. 65 160 G. JENSEN Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Funding Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa and conducted in association with the Spanish governmentfunded research project “Hacía un estudio comparativo del colonialismo español en África y de sus efectos en las poblaciones colonizadas de Guinea Ecuatorial y del Rif,” directed by Paz Moreno Feliu, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid [HAR201679164-P]. Notes on contributor Geoffrey Jensen is currently professor and holder of the John Biggs ’30 Cincinnati Chair in Military History at the Virginia Military Institute. He received a B.A. in History and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and master’s and doctoral degrees in History from Yale. His publications include books and articles on the history of Spain, European warfare, and the Spanish military in North Africa.