Spanish-Maghribi relations can be considered within a very unique framework of geographical and historical confluences. This paper explores how the interwoven pasts of Spain and the Maghrib generated a particular rhetoric of exceptionalism that not only fostered colonial intervention in North Africa, but still permeates current institutional and academic literature. By problematising past and present from a postcolonial perspective, we would like to transcend the rhetoric of a splendorous shared past and a unique colonial experience.