Morocco: Historical Haven for Spanish Refugees Fleeing Crisis

The real difficulties that Spain was facing at the time, pushed several hundred thousand Spaniards to emigrate, to settle elsewhere, far from their country. Morocco was one of the preferred destinations. In 1956, there were around 150,000 Spaniards residing in the Spanish, French, and also the Tangier protectorate areas, according to the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial. And to add that shortly after its independence, Morocco had 11.6 million inhabitants, of whom 1.3% were Spaniards.

El Confidencial met some Spaniards who went to make their fortune in the Maghreb, particularly in Morocco. Asunción Ferris remembers that she was only 10 years old in November 1942 when her parents decided to emigrate to Casablanca, located in the protectorate zone of Morocco. The grandfather of Asunción’s husband, Santiago Cañizares, had fled Malaga with his family due to the misery in which they were plunged in their country. Mazagan (Al Jedida today) was the city chosen by this family to settle and start a new life. Santiago was born there and was educated at the French school up to high school and then spoke French, Spanish and the Arabic dialect of his region fluently. Later, he got married and went to Tetouan, where he studied at the Moroccan Studies Center.

Like this family, many other Spanish families settled in Morocco, in Rabat, Casablanca or other cities. This is also the case of Margarita Ortiz, whose grandparents had landed in Casablanca in 1906, from Cadiz. "When independence came, we had not planned to return to Spain. I have always lived very integrated in Morocco, I have never felt any hostility or xenophobia," she said. Even if, later, with the advent of Moroccan independence, "Moroccanization" left little room for foreigners, most of them lived in perfect harmony with the local population and prospered in complete tranquility.

Today, the same source points out, nearly 750,000 Moroccans are officially registered in Spain, and the historical crises of the two countries have caused comings and goings of ships, witnesses to the migratory flows on both sides. As if, concludes the newspaper, "the Spaniards were also immigrants".