Tracing the New Reconquista: Religious Rhetoric in Morocco During the Spanish Civil War (abstract)

One of the most powerful founding myths of the Spanish nation is that of the reconquista, typically represented as the sacred and patriotic struggle of medieval Christians to rout infidel Muslim forces from the Iberian Peninsula. Given the potency of this narrative in Spanish tradition, it appeared as an attractive discourse for a group of disgruntled military officers staging a coup d’etat in 1936: they saw themselves as messianic guardians of the “true” Spain, duty-bound to purge the country of the decadent Republic then in power. Their self-portrayal became complicated, however, by a heavy reliance on the Spanish protectorate in northern Morocco – more specifically, on some 80,000 Muslim Morocco recruits into the rebel army. To smooth over the irony of an alliance with precisely the Moorish enemy of the medieval reconquista, leaders of the Nationalist effort began promoting the notion of a religious brotherhood between Catholics and Muslims. Followers of the two monotheistic traditions were to unite in a holy crusade against the threat of the atheistic Spanish Republic.

Tracing the New Reconquista: Religious Rhetoric in Morocco During the Spanish Civil War (working paper)

Once upon a time, many years ago, the kingdom of Spain suffered a terrible invasion by hordes of barbaric adherents to the nascent Islamic religion. These infidels, swarming up from North Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar, managed to penetrate and subdue the land as far north as the Pyrenees, stopped only by the heroic efforts of a small group of brave-hearted Christians. With their courage, the reconquista was born, that sacred and patriotic struggle to wrest the Spanish realm back from the heathen Muslims, fully realized with the defeat of Granada in 1492 at the hands of the good Catholic rulers, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Northward, ho!

Between Seattle and Vermont, the northern roots just wouldn’t leave me alone, so once my language grant ended in Fez at the end of February, I migrated to Tetouan – a smaller city about an hour east of Tangier, ten some kilometers from the Mediterranean and surrounded on all sides by the Rif Mountains.

A photographic explanation of my two-month absence from the blogosphere

Bob and Lynda Olson came to Morocco! Late February to early March.