The Crescent and the Dagger: Representations of the Moorish Other during the Spanish Civil War

Janus in the Metropole: Moroccan Soldiers and Sexual Violence Against Women in the Spanish Civil War

“…For example, we need to study why Spaniards do not know much about the stereotypes and images of themselves in the northern African colonies and their contrast to historical evidence, including sources from oral history (Fraser 2007). Bolorinos Allard (2016) has discussed maurophilial and maurophobic representations of the Moor that were present in Spanish culture before the Civil War, but were exacerbated during that period, as a mirror for self-representations of the Spanish national and political identity, but including contradictions in the propaganda discourse on both sides.…”

“…8 According to Driss Deiback Mimun (2005), Bárbulo (2008) and Bolorinos Allard (2016), Muslim soldiers or their widows encountered difficulties in obtaining pensions that, in any case, were very meagre. 9 Since October 1936, the Regulars were incorporated into larger brigades with Spanish volunteers (Bolorinos Allard 2016).…”

“…During the Civil War, they recruited in very poor towns at regional and local levels. Sometimes, tribal leaders who opposed recruitment were threatened and executed (Benjellon 1988;Bolorinos Allard 2016). Madariaga (2002) considered Moroccan soldiers who were mercenaries to have found in the army a way of living for them and their families (Bárbulo 2008).…”

International Political Sociology through the Colonial Mirror: A Contrapuntal Reading of the Spanish Civil War

“…The most promising framework with which to understand these extraordinary ideological manoeuvres in National-Catholic discourse and practice involves combining the ideas of paternalism (Wright, 2020) and brotherhood (Mateo Dieste, 2003) in the construction of a sort of fraternal tutelage which presented Spanish colonial rule in the northern Morocco as a "sentimental, not a political protectorate" (Velasco de Castro 2014: 215). As several Hispanist historians and cultural theorists have shown, the figure of the Moor -which had for centuries been represented in both high and popular culture in conflicting ways as bloodthirsty fanatic, enlightened despot, valiant warrior, duplicitous servant, or simply a noble savage -came to be glorified by the rebel side as a faithful, courageous, resilient and often eroticised fighter (Archilés 2013;Bolorinos Allard 2016;Jensen 2016;Martín Corrales 2002;Martin-Márquez 2004;Torres Delgado 2023). There was for Nationals no question of the Moroccan subordination in this relationship, but their commitment and audacity in battle indicated the Regulares shared a warrior genealogy with the best of the Iberian native sons.…”