The Strait of Gibraltar: Britain between Africa and Europe, part 2
The African Side: Tanger-Med, Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima, Ceuta
Tanger-Med
It just so happens that I have to venture into the same area of the continent in which my great-grandfather was garrisoned as a military administrator in the ’40s and ’50s. Despite constant warfare with various Moroccan tribes throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Spanish protectorate in northern Morocco was unceremoniously abandoned — along with the Spanish Sahara1 — in the latter phase of the Francoist regime. Three generations later, I come to the north of Morocco as a mere civilian in jeans, working in the private sector.
For my business trip, I take the ferry from Algeciras, a port in the Spanish province of Càdiz, to the terminal of Tanger-Med, the biggest deepwater port in the African continent and the crown jewel of Morocco’s modernising efforts. The recently-built infrastructure here facilitates, among other things, imports of raw materials for car batteries to the planned Mohammed VI Tanger Tech City, and the export of industrial components and fully-assembled vehicles (mostly under Renault-Nissan marques) from the nearby Tanger Automotive City to the final customers in the EU and the UK. The car factories are a mirror image of Gibraltar’s automotive repurposing facility for analogue off-road cars, one of the very few places in the world to mass-produce such vehicles, providing for various state organisations and NGOs scattered all across Africa.
Low overheads and easy access for refuelling the bigger transatlantic cargo vessels makes it especially attractive to shipping companies. Maersk, the world’s second-largest shipping company, recently chose to move from Algeciras to Tanger-Med, making it their stopover port for their routes between Asia and America.
Depending on the day, the journey across the Strait can be smooth and enjoyable, lasting barely ninety minutes, or a long and rather uncomfortable experience. In the summer, the intense heat combined with the working engines of hundreds of queueing cars turns the ship into a sauna. Inside, a designated passport control cabin and a room for prayer give hints as to the average passenger on these trips: Moroccans, going back and forth between their hometowns and their residences in various European countries.
After arriving at the terminal, vehicles need to pass various checks, and any suspicious cargo is inspected. Waiting times are long. According to my colleagues in Morocco, the queues have been getting worse every year for the past five years. The long queues are believed to be caused, according to one driver, ‘by the Jews and the French’. I favour a simpler explanation: customs is understaffed and poorly coordinated. As I have nothing to declare, I go through much quicker, though not without some delay. Some Moroccans, those who have to wait for longer, have stacked their belongings on the roof rack of their cars, holding them in place with ropes — a rather reliable technique I see replicated on the highway.
Any exasperation that had built up during the wait quickly dissipated in passport control, where I see a familiar face — an Andrew Tate doppelganger — nervously checking the queue times. As I’m about to go onto the highway, I’m greeted by a thin cow by the roadside.
Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima
After a thirty-minute drive on the highway, I arrive at Tangier, the capital of the larger province of Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima. Also favoured for its position relative to the Strait, the city changed hands over the centuries between Portuguese conquistadors, Charles II’s English Navy captains, and the Moroccan sultans. In 1912, a treaty between France and Spain established a Spanish protectorate on a strip of land on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Most of the rest of Morocco, already under French occupation, now formally became a French protectorate. Tangier, however, was deliberately excluded from these arrangements. Instead, after protracted negotiations between Britain, France, and Spain, leaving the city in limbo for over a decade, it became an ‘international zone’ from 1925. It was then briefly occupied, but not annexed, by Francoist Spain from 1940 to 1945, under the pretence of the risk of an Italian invasion. It was at this time that it became a spy hotspot, the real-life setting for the classic film Casablanca. The ‘international zone’ was restored after the conclusion of the Second World War, and in 1956 the city was finally returned to the Moroccans.
With a population of roughly 1.3 million, this is a more cosmopolitan city in the old sense of the word, at least when compared to other Moroccan cities like the larger Casablanca or the similarly-sized Fez. From the days of European overlordship remains a certain soft eclecticism. It was in this corner of Africa where European hippies and writers from the Beat Generation looked for inspiration and peace (among ‘other’ things), with unrestricted wantonness in the dimly-lit alleys of the city, the remote Rif Mountains, and the poppy fields of Ketama.
Although the Tangier-based writer and socialite Walter B. Harris lived his best life in the city, sharing glimpses of the colourful late nineteenth-century Alawi sultanate,2 it was Sir Harry ‘Kaid’ Maclean who made the most out of Morocco, earning a name on his own in the country:
He taught the Moors how to shoot but he did more than that — he gained the confidence of his imperial master ‘the King of the Age, the Prince of Believers, my Lord El Hassan’ and a few years found him standing next to the throne itself, as its chief diplomatic as well as military adviser. Without changing his faith or ceasing to be a canny Scot, Kaid Maclean became to all intents and purposes a Moor. He roamed the wild country with the nomadic Court, and was often the only link between El Hassan and the Ministers of the Powers who sat with folded hands at Tangier.
Of course his influence with the Sultan excited much jealousy and there were many who watched his career with the green eyes of envy. A military mission from France was placed ‘at his Majesty’s disposal’, but all efforts to undermine Kaid Maclean’s influence and authority proved futile. He accompanied the Sultan on many expeditions against rebellious tribes, and was with him on that last dread march from Marrakesh to Rabat when the ‘son of Mahomet’, a weary and broken old man, succumbed to the hardships of a forced passage across the Atlas Mountains against a people in revolt. It was imperative that the death of the Sultan should be concealed until his favourite son had been proclaimed his successor, lest some usurper should grab the vacant throne. So, with Kaid Maclean marching by the side of it, the body was borne on a State litter, and the sheikhs and khalifas paid homage to the poor clay under its trappings of green and gold just as though it were their royal master alive and powerful. In secret the body was carried into Rabat at dead of night through a hole in the wall.
The young Sultan came to the throne with little knowledge of the world beyond the walls of his harem, but he had sense enough to recognise that Kaid Maclean was a strong and safe man on whom he should lean for support. As the power behind the throne, the influence of the Scotchman became greater than ever. In 1901 a knighthood was conferred upon him for his assistance to British diplomacy in Morocco. The strenuous fighting life — fighting barbaric tribesmen, fighting the cholera scourge, fighting the wiles of European diplomacy — has agreed well with him. Though his beard and his moustache are white and his hair frosted, at fifty-seven he is still as hard as nails and far more agile than most men at forty.
—The Star (Christchurch, New Zealand), 21 September 1905
The graves of Maclean and Harris, as well as the remains of a few local personalities and various fallen Royal Air Force soldiers in the Second World War, can be visited in the Anglican cemetery of St. Andrew’s Church, where the Union Jack still flies high. Of the Western rovers who found in Tangier a new life, only a few remain: around 30 Brits, Canadians, and Americans; 150 Italians; and 500 Spaniards, almost all of them senior citizens. By contrast, the number of Frenchmen in the city now stands at over 10,000.
As the factory manager tells me, ‘things have indeed changed in Morocco over the last eight years’. Both the cities and the countryside are considerably more orderly. Streets are cleaner, and the gardens on the waterfront promenade of Tangier look astounding. The turbulent reign of Hassan II (1961-99) is all but a distant memory, preceding King Mohammed VI’s ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ rule, with several enterprises linked to SIGER, the leading holding company of the royal family of Morocco, pushing on the rapid transformation of the country. Certain industries are now working at or beyond maximum capacity in preparation for the country hosting the Africa Cup of Nations this summer, and co-hosting the World Cup in 2030 as well.
The stray cats and dogs roaming the streets and factory floors all look well-fed. Most of the workers can now read and write, no longer having to lie about meeting the literacy requirements that many employers impose. Around Tangier, I managed to see more men with their body and head covered with the traditional robe, the djellaba, than veiled women. Sometimes, I even saw whole groups of women totally unveiled, whilst there were hardly any men with the izbiba (lit., ‘raisin’, a purple mark on the forehead of some especially pious Muslims, produced by repeatedly and somewhat forcefully touching the ground with one’s head during prayer). Although the majority of Moroccan women still stay in their homes throughout the day, it does seem that there has been a change in attitude towards the hijab. Even relatively recent novelties, like high-speed electric scooters and protein supplement stores, don’t feel like they are out of place here.
Still, in some ways, things haven’t changed much at all. The shanty towns are smaller in size, but still present on the outskirts of some settlements. The number of people ‘milling around’ — as certain X users would put it — has also fallen, but their presence is still very much felt. If a visitor leaves the city and takes the highway, he will be greeted by a couple of young fellows sitting on the barriers, asking for spare change just for handing you the ticket from the automatic tollbooth, as was the case ever since the highways were built. On city roundabouts, policemen occasionally show up to give traffic signals to ease the never-ending congestion. And in the countryside, the production of hashish continues to be an artisanal affair, only now requiring a royal licence for its cultivation.
Arguably, the biggest change is more subtle than any of this: Spanish is now only spoken by a tiny minority of the people here. In the factory, the workers overwhelmingly speak to me in French, barring a small number of office workers who do know Spanish. And in Tangier, some city-dwellers near the tourist areas can mutter a few words, like souvenir-sellers, or a funny-looking man offering me ‘coca buena’ (cocaine). While not yet zero, this is a big fall in the number of speakers in a relatively short period of time. The present generation of Moroccans born on this corner of the African continent may be the first in almost two centuries to not speak Spanish as a second or even as a third language (English trails behind Arabic and French, with Berber languages also spoken in some areas in the south and the east of the country).
A few Spanish-owned business in the province incentivise some of the local Moroccans to pass down the language: think of Alsa, the bus supplier for Tangier’s public transport network; or of tourism-related and hospitality enterprises, like Casa García in Assilah, a local favourite of politicians, celebrities, and expats. But these are the exception. The vanishing of the Spanish language has certainly taken an irremediable turn. The restaurants and hotels that keep the spelling in Spanish on their signs usually only do so for aesthetic reasons, rather than for their actual ownership. The road signs pointing to Ceuta only show the Arabic pronunciation (‘Sebta’) for locals travelling to the Spanish enclave. The ruins of Al-Shawi Kasbah, next to the ‘9 April 1947’ dam, lie abandoned, surrounded by the centuries-old fallen building-rocks and bricks.
These last remnants of Spain in Morocco reflect the dwindling of the language on the African continent as a whole, with an identical, gradual evanescence of Spanish in the nearly deserted Western Sahara. Unlike English, French, and Portuguese (and to some extent even German and Italian), which are still widely used in government organisations, businesses, and military forces around the continent, the Spanish language is all but gone from Africa. Apart from the roughly 1.5 million Spanish-speaking inhabitants of Equatorial Guinea — who, when wanting to emigrate, choose the neighbouring French-speaking Gabon over Spain — only the small, autonomous cities of Ceuta (pop. 83,100) and Melilla (pop. 86,400) remain.
Ceuta
Located on the eastern side of the northern tip of Morocco, east of Tanger-Med and almost directly facing Gibraltar, Ceuta juts from the hilly coast, a favourite spot for Barbary pirates until the arrival of the Europeans. Even back then, the hand of the Englishman left its mark.
During the summer of 1415, an English seaman by the name of Mondo met with the now-widowed King of Portugal in Lisbon. Eager to offer his four transport ships and some men-at-arms for a new war effort, as he had done in previous ventures for the Portuguese, Mondo feared that the rumours of a prolonged mourning after the recent passing of Philippa of Lancaster, Queen of Portugal, would halt the planned expedition to Ceuta. King João shrugged off the concerns.3 Less than a month later, the King, his sons (the ‘illustrious generation’), his soldiers, and Mondo’s men had taken the city of Ceuta with minimum casualties.
Since 1668, when it was ceded by Portugal to Spain, Ceuta has been kept as an indispensable Spanish foothold in Africa, primarily for the control of the waters on the Strait. But whereas Gibraltar was organised as a trading post and military base, not too different from a classic colony, Ceuta is the brainchild of the early-modern era, organized as a plaza fuerte or a presidio; a purely military holdout. Considered integral Spanish territory, in part because they were Spanish possessions long before the establishment of the protectorate in Morocco, Spain retained control of Ceuta, along with its sister city of Melilla (located some 400km to the east), even after the rest of Spain’s possessions in the region were reintegrated into the Kingdom of Morocco in 1956. Morocco continues to claim the two autonomous cities to this day.4
For visitors, a tense atmosphere is palpable around the enclave, in stark contrast to the warm and relaxed atmosphere in Gibraltar. One needs only to look at the concrete barriers on both sides of the main coastal road, as well as at the military bases and police stations spread through the border to keep watch and prevent the illegal crossings of African immigrants, black and Arab alike, camping on the other side. However, the immigrants, hoping to use Ceuta as a stepping stone to Europe, are not deterred by their presence: the detention centers for illegal trespassers have nearly reached four times their maximum capacity.
Coexistence with the Moroccan population, on both sides of the border, is a strenuous affair. The violent neighbourhood of El Príncipe, right next to the border with Morocco, is home to the majority of the Muslim population in Ceuta and, despite police efforts, is one of the few genuine no-go zones in the entirety of Spain. The local government has attempted a rapprochement with their non-Christian neighbours, like including the festivities of the closure of Ramadan (Eid al-Fitr) and the feast of the sacrifice (Eid al-Adha) as local bank holidays — but alas, this looks to be to no avail. Just a few months ago, a multi-party committee for the retaking of Ceuta and Melilla by Morocco has been rebooted after a decade of inactivity. To top things off, in January, a deputy from Ceuta’s Islamist party, working at the local prison, was arrested for drug trafficking (though that’s not to say that the Spanish are immune to such temptations either).
A favourable tax regime, similar to the one in Gibraltar, has been arranged for both Ceuta and Melilla. This has incentivised online gambling businesses to set up their headquarters here. A few construction and mining operations also manage to turn a profit here and there. And yet, Ceuta and Melilla are not like Gibraltar on the other side of the Strait: they lose massive amounts of money. Both still show record unemployment figures in Spain, as well as in the entire EU (though we should account for similar circumstances as those in Campo de Gibraltar, namely hidden employment in drug trafficking). The empty buildings on the eastern side of the port show a long-gone dynamism which has unfortunately become an enormous burden of maintenance in peacetime. And of course, the stringent security requirements, something that there is no equivalent of in Gibraltar, have not helped.
As the city faces the prospect of bankruptcy, the government in Madrid has tried various schemes to alternately save costs and avert its decline, from subsidising ferry routes to the mainland (often with hardly any passengers), to letting the Moroccan customs officers do the scrupulous searches on the vehicles crossing the border. On life support — but very much not dead — the supposedly ‘autonomous’ Ceuta remains dependent on the whims of politicians on the other side of the Strait.
This article was written by an anonymous Pimlico Journal contributor, based in Spain. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.
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The Spanish Sahara has now become the disputed territory of Western Sahara, claimed and mostly administered by Morocco despite a low-level insurgency and UN resolutions to the contrary.
I personally recommend his travel diaries, The Land of an African Sultan: Travels in Morocco (1887, 1888, and 1889). Available online.
Mateus De Pisano, Livro Da Guerra de Ceuta, p. 30 (1460, reed. 1915).
As well as Ceuta and Melilla, Morocco also claims the other Spanish plazas de soberanía (‘strongholds of sovereignty’). These are a number of small islands with no permanent inhabitants near the coast of Morocco, plus one peninsula that was previously an island. Spain refuses to relinquish control of these territories on the basis that, much like Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish presence there preceded the establishment of the protectorate in Morocco.
These territories occasionally create disputes. In 2002, Morocco sent naval cadets to one of the islands. They were quickly evicted without resistance by Spanish commandos. In 2012, nearly one-hundred African migrants camped on another of the islands, hoping to gain access to Spain. They were sent back to Morocco, who then proceeded to dump them over the Algerian border.
Fascinating piece thanks.