English

A Spain of Moorish blood: the Right and the Arab-Berber heritage

Publicado por Fernando Bravo López el

Between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, almost the only thing that united the Spanish right-wing was their animosity towards the entire left. Apart from that, they had many differences. One of them was their conception of Spain’s Islamic past

Fernando Bravo López
Autonomous University of Madrid

Falangist girls welcoming a representation of Moroccan girls in Burgos during the Spanish Civil War (1938). Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.

Spanish version

Arab blood, Moorish blood, Spanish blood

Between the end of 1926 and the beginning of 1927, a curious controversy took place between the Aragonese writer Gregorio García-Arista and the Cordovan journalist Antonio de la Rosa. The dispute began as a result of a statement by the former in which he reproduced the traditional image of Muslims and Jews as enemies of Spain, and in which he also mocked the belief that the Arabs had contributed anything to Spanish or European civilisation (ABC, 4 December 1926).

To this, de la Rosa replied indignantly, branding García-Arista an «incorrigible xenophobe», vindicating the contributions of «Arab Spain» to universal civilisation and proudly wielding the «noble blood of Arab knights» that the Andalusian people still carried in their veins (La Voz, 11 December 1926).

In his counter-argument, García-Arista, while branding his opponent a «Moor» and a «fakir», turned his argument around: taking up the ideas of the school of Spanish Arabists, he acknowledged the greatness of the Muslim civilisation of medieval Spain, but claimed, however, that its authors were not Arabs or Berbers, but Muslims of the «Spanish race», i.e., the indigenous «Spanish» population converted to Islam. So, neither Spain nor Europe owed anything to the Arabs. Everything was the work of true Spaniards of the «Spanish race». The Arabs had contributed nothing, not even their blood, which had been diluted very early on in the bloodstream of the «Spanish race». Therefore, it could be said that, in reality, «the Reconquest was a civil war» between Spaniards of different religions (ABC, 6 January 1927).

Both Antonio de la Rosa and Gregorio García-Arista belonged to the Spanish right wing. Both supported the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and both enthusiastically greeted Franco’s military coup of 18 July 1936. However, both had a very different view of Spain’s past and of the «racial» elements that characterised the Spanish nation. This also meant that, despite the political affinities between the two, they envisaged the Spain of the future and its relationship with Europe somewhat differently: a Spain in which the Arab-Berber racial element was a determining factor was a Spain racially distant from Europe, with all that this implied; a Spain that had remained racially unchanged by the Arab-Berber influence was a Spain racially close to Europe that could still be considered a «Beacon of the West». Determining this was of vital importance at a time when the question of Spain’s place in the world was being decided: whether it should «Europeanise» in order to overcome the state of decadence in which it found itself, or whether it should remain faithful to its traditional particularism and distance itself from the European example, which was precisely the reason for its decadence.

Cover of the score of the pasodoble “Sangre Mora” by Ramón Coll (1923)

The Spanish right had different views on this. In fact, between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, almost the only thing that united them was their animosity towards the entire left ―from the liberal to the anarchist― which was clearly identified with the legacy of the French Enlightenment. But beyond this common enemy, the right, from the Carlists to the Falangists, including the conservative Alphonsine liberals and the National-Catholics, had many differences, differences that were momentarily set aside at the time of the coup d’état of 1936, but which were soon to reappear during the early years of Franco’s regime. One of these differences, as we have seen, was their conception of Spain’s Islamic past. 

Within Carlist traditionalism, one line can be identified ―personified by the Arabist Francisco Javier Simonet― which was open to recognising the Spanishness of most of the Andalusis, but which, in general, denied any virtue to that past, which was identified with an evil doctrine: Islam. However, it was more common for Carlism to identify the Andalusis as invading foreigners who had been justly expelled to Africa for the sake of Christian civilisation. In this sense, the Andalusi Muslims constituted «the other» against whom the Christian people had fought to liberate themselves. And, obviously, this struggle was extended to the contemporary period, identifying the medieval enemy, the «Saracen», with the enemy of the moment, whether it was the Moroccan enemy ―with whom all kinship was denied: «we reject any kind of kinship with the fanatics of the Koran», said El Baluarte (27 October 1893) ― or whether it was the liberals or leftists.

Among the National-Catholics this vision was also very present, except that the Christians’ fight against the invasion was not only for the sake of the Monarchy and the Church, but also, and indissolubly, for the sake of the Nation, of the only Spanish nation that was, for them, possible: a Catholic nation. In this way, the Muslims ―or «the Moors», as they usually called them― constituted that «other» against which the Catholic character of the nation had been built. As the National-Catholic intellectual Ramiro de Maeztu (1934: 205) would say, «The Spanish character has been formed in a multi-secular struggle against the Moors and against the Jews». And, shortly afterwards, Manuel García Morente affirmed that «What is someone else’s is Islamic and foreign at the same time. What is our own is, therefore, both Christian and Spanish’ (1961: 287), something that was conceived as the fruit of Providence’s design, which showed that Spain had been chosen by God for the defence of Christianity; that was its purpose, its raison d’être.

«Santiago y cierra España». Illustration of the final pages of Defensa de la Hispanidad de Ramiro de Maeztu (1934)

However, as we have seen, not everyone in National-Catholicism thought the same way. Thanks to the influence of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, who throughout his life had been moving closer to the postulates of the school of Spanish Arabists, and thanks, obviously, to the latter ―whose most prominent representatives were within Catholic conservatism―  people like García-Arista ― who, in fact, was a disciple of Menéndez Pelayo―  had accepted the full Spanishness of the Andalusi Muslims, while denying any contribution from the Arabs and Berbers.

In other areas of the Spanish right, on the other hand, the Arab-Berber legacy was fully accepted. In part of that heterogeneous sector of the right wing that began to take shape during the Second Republic inspired by Italian and German fascisms, in the Falange and the JONS, the vindication of that heritage remained very present.

The Moorish (or Arab) blood of the Spaniards

This conception of the origins of the Spanish people had a long history which cannot be dealt with here, but it is perhaps worth pointing out that it was a very widespread view in Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; a view which crossed ideological boundaries and which, contrary to what has sometimes been claimed, was by no means restricted to Andalusian nationalism. It could even be said that, among the various ways of conceiving Spanish national identity during that period, at least one was built on the full conviction that Spaniards had, to a greater or lesser extent, a Moorish or Arab origin ―for both origins were often confused in discourse, and sometimes Jewish origin was also added.

From the late 19th century onwards, many Spaniards used this image, mixed with the most widespread Orientalist and racist stereotypes applied to themselves, to denounce various uncomfortable aspects of their own society, attributing their origin to the influence of their biological Arab-Berber heritage. Most commonly, the influence of Arab or Moorish blood was blamed for the supposed congenital inability of Spaniards to follow the European path and live in a full democracy. Even some of the most important Spanish novelists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries echoed these ideas. For example, Emilia Pardo Bazán had one of her characters say that “with Arab blood in our veins and our eternal indiscipline”, democracy, which was possible in northern European countries, was impossible in Spain (1910: 134). And in what is perhaps Pío Baroja’s most important novel, El árbol de la ciencia (1911), one of his characters went even further, blaming all the ills of Spanish society on “what remains of Moor and Jew in the Spaniard” (2012: 262).

As we have pointed out, this vision was very present in the Spanish right-wing, partly because it was one of the foundations on which the discourse of «Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood» was based, which was widely used to legitimise Spanish colonialism on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Falangist girls walking through Plasencia with Moroccan soldiers during the Civil War. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.

This discourse, which is usually represented as homogeneous, was in fact a diversity of discourses of different origins and foundations that sometimes appeared mixed, giving shape to the idea of the existence of a «racial» brotherhood between Spaniards and Moroccans. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish two variants. On the one hand, there was one ―which could perhaps be considered more academic, as it tended to be based on the anthropology of the time― that defended the existence of a racial link from prehistoric times: the same race, sometimes called «Iberian», sometimes called «Mediterranean», would have lived on both sides of the Strait and would have remained more or less stable in its «racial» composition until contemporary times. The clearest example of this type of formulation is represented by a speech by Joaquín Costa (1884: 305) in which he asserted that blood did not separate Moroccans and Spaniards, that «Moors and Spaniards are brothers», since they belonged «to the same Mediterranean race».

This first variant also had a long history that has recently been studied by Carlos Cañete, and is the one that has most in common with the idea of «Muslim Spain» defended by the school of Spanish Arabists, since it was based on the idea that the same «racial substratum» had survived over the centuries, with little or no alteration by the Arab-Berber conquest of the eighth century. However, as far as we know, Spanish Arabists do not seem to have advocated any kind of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood based on racial notions ―in 1940, Asín Palacios would argue, in any case, for the existence of a «spiritual brotherhood», not a racial one―. In fact, Julián Ribera, in his 1901-1902 texts on «The Moroccan Question», did not refer once to this idea of brotherhood. The only racial kinship he attributed to the Spaniards was, on the contrary, with France (2008: 181).

The second variant ―which we might consider more popular―  was totally contradictory to the first: instead of the inalterability of race, it argued that, as a product of the Arab-Berber conquest, a profound miscegenation had taken place in the Peninsula, and, as a product of this, it defended the existence in Spaniards of an Arab-Berber racial element that was decisive, defining. It was on the basis of this vision of the past that the existence in the present of a brotherhood of blood between Moroccans and Spaniards was affirmed: Spaniards carried Arab or Berber blood in their veins ―and sometimes this idea was combined with the idea that Moroccans also carried Spanish blood. It is precisely this more «popular» variant that can be found in the versions of the discourse of Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood most present among some sectors of the Spanish right, mainly among the Falangists and the Africanist military linked to the military coup of 1936.

“Blood of Morocco and Spain”

During the Civil War, it was more than striking that the side that invoked the image of the Crusade and the Reconquest to legitimise its fight against the Republic was precisely the side that employed Muslim troops, the side that received with full honours the Moroccan notables who visited the Peninsula, and even invited them to pray in the mosque of Cordoba (Diario de Cordoba, 6 April 1937). The Francoist authorities also paid, for many years, the expenses of the pilgrimage to Mecca, and they took advantage of the opportunity this provided to emphasise the “brotherhood linked by blood ties” between Moroccans and Spaniards (Azul, 5 January 1939).

This situation was difficult to justify from the point of view of Catholic traditionalism imbued with the crusader spirit. The contradictions were obvious and, in some cases, blatant. Thus, for example, the Falangist daily Labor could greet in one column «the Moroccan soldiers in this hour of triumph» with «God save you old warriors of Islam», considering them members of a «sister race», while, in a parallel column, it spoke of the capture of Guecho (in the Basque Country) by the requetés (i.e., Carlist traditionalist soldiers), calling the town «The Mecca of Aguirre the great Eusko Mohammed» (Labor, 21 June 1937).

Portrait of the grand vizier Sidi Ahmed b. Abdelkrim el Gammia. Labor, 21 de junio de 1937.

On the other hand, from the point of view of the more secularised sectors of fascism, the situation was more easily justifiable: they only had to appeal to that image so solidified by the tradition of blood brotherhood between Spaniards and Moroccans.

Thus, Francoist propaganda echoed this type of idea when, for example, it spoke of the presence of Moroccan troops at certain celebrations: In the Madrid town of Griñón, on the occasion of the celebration of the «Christ aparecido«, a journalist described the embrace between Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Coco and a Muslim soldier, referring to the brotherhood between the two peoples and pointing out that, at that moment, «it was also felt that the Moorish blood that the Spaniard carried in his veins and the Spanish blood that the Moor carried beat in the hearts of those two men with the same force that Moroccans and Spaniards are now fighting together to save Spain» (Imperio, 19 June 1937). It is precisely this same idea of community of blood that we find in a famous speech by Francisco Franco in 1937: «Spain and Islam have always been the peoples who understood each other best. When your ancestors passed through these places and these fields, the Muslim people had a culture, a science, a greatness, a greatness that is fused in the blood of Morocco and Spain’ (ABC (Seville), 3 April 1937).

Carmen Franco y Serrano Suñer welcomed a commission of Moroccan girls in Burgos (1938). Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.

Around the same time, José María Pemán, who took up a position halfway between Acción Española and Falange circles, justified the presence of Moroccan troops by appealing to the «mestizaje», the product of medieval coexistence with the Arabs, which had resulted in the «richest and most subtle civilisation of the Middle Ages» (El Día de Palencia, 11 November 1937). That such a philofascist orator welcomed the Arab, Semitic contribution and the racial and cultural mixing brought about by the conquest of 711 is not strange. During the 1930s, two different visions of ‘race’ and racism struggled within Spanish fascism: one, influenced by Nazism, defended racial purity as an ideal and perceived any Semitic influence as a threat; and the other, based on the Catholic idea of ‘hispanidad’, defended racial diversity within a spiritual unity. Pemán himself, in 1932, argued that «our tradition is not, then, a tradition of ‘race’, but on the contrary: of universality. ‘Racism’ ―which is exclusivism and a break with universality― is a Protestant and Germanic introduction» (El Día de Palencia, 18 October 1932). In fact, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, situating Spain, because of its Arab-Berber heritage, halfway between East and West, would go so far as to consider that what characterised the country was its «anti-racist genius» (1938: 88). Even the fascist daily Imperio, shortly afterwards (16 August 1938), would publish an article stating that «The Falange is not, nor can it be, ‘racist’, unless it first betrays its Doctrine and empties of meaning its conception of man, of Homeland, of Empire». 

By no means did that make the racist tendency within Spanish fascism disappear, and it would not begin to do so until the defeat of Germany in 1945, when that sector of Falange was gradually pushed aside in favour of more orthodox Catholic positions. In fact, it was possible to defend the mestizo origin of Spaniards and, at the same time, a totally racist view of history in which the Arab-Berber heritage played a decisive role and explained the conflicts that Spanish society faced. The leader of Falange himself, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, shortly before his execution, defended in “Germanos contra bereberes” (1996: 160-166) ideas very similar to those already put forward by Onésimo Redondo, which explained the history of Spain as a struggle between Goths of Aryan origin, identified with the ruling class, and Spaniards of Berber origin, identified with the popular masses ―especially the populations of the South and Southeast of the peninsula―, as well as with “the entire left-wing intelligentsia”.

Moroccan representation at the «Parade of Victory» (1939). Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.

The slow imposition of «Muslim Spain».

Antonio de la Rosa’s vision, based on the idea of the determining influence of Arab-Berber blood in the racial make-up of Spaniards, began to give way, little by little, throughout the Franco regime. Meanwhile, García-Arista’s vision began to prevail, without wiping his opponent’s ideas off the map ―which, in fact, have continued to be very present in Spanish society to this day, although very little among the Spanish right.

This process was helped by the success of the work of some of the disciples of the Arabists Julián Ribera and Miguel Asín, Ángel González Palencia and Emilio García Gómez, who continued to defend the ideas of their masters from privileged positions within the Franco regime. José María Pemán himself, in the 1950s, seemed to have evolved in his thinking to gradually qualify the idea of the mixture of bloods and to embrace the idea that, despite the Arab-Berber conquest, throughout the Middle Ages there had been a pre-eminence of the Hispanic indigenous element, and that the Arab-Berber contribution to the Spanish bloodstream was very scarce, so that «the Moors of Spain, although they retained all the outward appearance of Moors, were almost entirely Spanish by blood and race,» which explained the splendour of Andalusi civilisation (1950: 81).

Also important was the paradoxical influence exerted among some authors linked to the regime by the work of Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, who was, in fact, president of the Republic in exile. Thus, contrary to Américo Castro’s interpretation of Spain’s past, Sánchez-Albornoz used the theories of Spanish Arabists to argue that the Semitic influence in Spain had been negligible, and that the vast majority of the Andalusis had been native Spaniards. It was to this that the greatness of the civilisation of al-Andalus was due, not to any Semitic contribution. If anything, the Muslim invasion had removed Spain from its European destiny. It was here that Spain’s temporary estrangement from Europe was to be found. The «Reconquista» had come, according to him, to partially remedy this separation by saving Spain from the “cruelty”, “stupidity” and “barbarism” of the Islamic peoples, and by returning Spain to the path that «destiny» had marked out for it: that of Europe (1983: esp. 30, 39).

Due to these developments, in the 1960s it was possible to find, in one of the most widely circulated textbooks on Spanish History of the time ―with 10 editions between 1963 and 1974― the following: “One cannot speak of the Arabisation of Spain and its race”, because “the great mass of the peninsular population had absorbed the few Berber conquerors, and only a few families of pure Arab origin formed a racial minority” (1974: pp. 77 and 90).

Despite all this, the idea of the ‘Moorish blood’ of the Spaniards survived throughout the Franco regime. In 1959, Camilo José Cela, who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989, still claimed that «not a single Spaniard is free from sensing Moorish or Jewish blood running through his veins». And, already in Democracy, Ernesto Giménez Caballero continued to situate Spain between East and West, and was pleased with the particularities of the Spanish character, attributing it to the Arab-Berber heritage that allowed him to define Spaniards as “Euro-Moors: half Europeans, half Maghrebis” (ABC, 20 April 1977).

Ernesto Giménez Caballero during the Spanish Civil War. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica.

It is not surprising, therefore, that king Juan Carlos I ―a person educated in Franco’s Africanism and who received his legitimacy from the military coup of 1936― stated the following in 1979: 

«It has often been said that Morocco and Spain meet respectively in the very interiority of their peoples and of their most intimate historical being, with no distance separating them from the history of the neighbouring country. I subscribe to this statement». (2018: 36)

***

What has become of this tradition of identification with the Arab-Berber heritage, so present in some sectors of the Spanish right until recently? Everything seems to indicate that it has been definitively consigned to the dustbin of history along with its rival, the idea of «Muslim Spain», increasingly marginalised in this ideological sector by visions linked to traditionalism and National-Catholicism, visions that deny any kinship with Muslims and see in the Andalusi past ―as well as in their left-wing adversaries― something foreign, evil and threatening that must be fought, defeated and expelled to fulfil what Providence has ordained for Spain.

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