Unearthed Love Letters Reveal Forbidden Romances Between Moroccan Soldiers and Spanish Women Under Franco Regime

The dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco Bahamonde weighed heavily to prevent relations between Moroccan soldiers and Spanish women. Considering these relationships as a threat to the Francoist colonial hierarchy, he assigned himself the mission of seizing the love letters between them. These letters telling stories of couples facing difficulties due to the separation caused by the Spanish protectorate in Morocco were thus seized between 1930 and 1950, according to the BBC. The encounter between Moroccan men and Spanish women took place in Spain after Moroccan soldiers were enlisted in the Spanish army during the civil war.

Decades later, researchers Josep Lluis Mateo Dieste and Nieves Muriel Garcoa found these letters, carefully hidden in the Spanish archives. These correspondences reveal the personal lives of Moroccan soldiers and Spanish women in the midst of colonial oppression. "When will you return to Spain?" wrote Carmela from Granada to her Moroccan lover in 1944. A letter the recipient never received. "Each letter contains a tantalizing glimpse of the whole of a relationship, but each also speaks to the repression these relationships faced," said the University of Cambridge historian, Arthus Asseraf.

"The authorities’ opposition to these relationships was rooted in Franco’s misogynistic ideology, his religious concerns, and the preservation of the ’prestige of the race’ aimed at maintaining Spain’s perceived superiority over Morocco," the researcher believes.