This is the Strait of Gibraltar, easily one of the most important waterways, not just
for Europe but for the world.
This passageway, barely 15km wide at its narrowest, separates Europe from Africa, and Spain from
Morocco.
Except not entirely, as if you look closely, you will see these two Spanish exclaves in
Northern Africa.
These are Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish cities located on the Moroccan side of the sea.
But despite that, their residents are Spanish, they pay with Euros, they speak Spanish, have
access to Spanish services, and fly the Spanish flag.
And these cities aren’t alone.
For Spain, these are the Plazas de Soberanía, or the places of sovereignty, and while most
of them are just small rocks– one of which is connected to Morocco by the shortest border
in the world– two have grown to sizable cities with… creepily similar populations.
The fact that the EU has borders in Africa is a huge deal, but what I want to talk about
is… why does Spain even have entire cities on the other side of the sea?
Or rather, why do they still have them?
[Thanks to Paradox Interactive for making this video
possible]
This is Ceuta, or what locals might call “thew-ta”, from the Latin septa for the fortress upon
the seven hills.
At first glance, things don’t seem much different from any small cities over in Andalusia
on the other side of the strait.
There are quaint squares and seafood restaurants and dragon statues and nice beaches and Hindu
temples and everything.
However Ceuta doesn’t have an airport, so the only way to get there from mainland Spain
is by a ferry or a special helicopter airline.
Unfortunately the website was incredibly finicky and didn‘t let me pay for a ticket, so I
guess we‘ll just look at it.
By most accounts it would be completely unremarkable, were it not for its location.
Alright let‘s back up for a moment.
These strongholds of sovereignty are sort of a catch-all term for a bunch of rocks within
the Mediterranean owned and administered by Spain.
These include everything from the tiny Peñón de Alhucemas to entire cities like Melilla
and Ceuta, and it’s these cities I want to talk about, particularly this one, Ceuta,
at the Straits of Gibraltar…
mostly because I just went there to make this video.
So it’s just a few leftover colonial possessions that Spain refused to let go of, makes sense.
But no, Morocco was colonized by France, not Spain, and Ceuta being under Iberian control
pre-dates Europe’s colonizing of the rest of Africa.
Here let’s look at this map I got from my hotel.
It’s kinda zoomed in but we can deal with that.
Around 2,700 years ago the main power of the Mediterranean world were the Phoenicians,
and to them this city had not just a perfect location near the Strait of Gibraltar, but
perfect geography in and of itself.
The old city is located here, on the Peninsula of Almina, connected by a narrow, easily defensible
isthmus to the continent, only a proverbial stone’s throw from the powerhouse city Gades,
nowadays known as Cádiz.
Or I guess it was a peninsula but now is technically an island, but I think that just proves my
point.
So in other words, it was incredibly valuable and incredibly easy to defend, it’s not
like a rival power can just take it from you in one day with barely any fight…
right?
HISTORY To understand what’s going on with these
borders nowadays though, we need to go a bit forward, past the Romans but still before
Spain was even aware of the Americas, and in fact back when the map was sort of the
other way around.
Here, look at this map from around 1360.
During this time, the south of the Iberian Peninsula was ruled by the Emirate of Granada.
Islam first spread to the peninsula in the 8th century under the rule of the Umayyads
in Damascus, and Ceuta itself was used by the Umayyads as a launching point into the
Iberian Peninsula.
After the Umayyad invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, the majority of the region
spent nearly 800 years under the rule of various dynasties.
Neither side was completely unified the whole time, but at this time there were two constants:
the very north was Christian while the south was Islamic, and both, like, really, really
wanted to control the other half.
This began a long campaign among the disunited northern kingdoms to try to expand to the
south, which to their perspective was a reconquest… or a Reconquista.
[AD BREAK] Contrary to popular belief, the Reconquista
was not a single, glorious push to conquer the peninsula, but a much slower affair that
unfolded over centuries.
During this time the Christian kingdoms of the north were anything but united, and for
their part neither were the the Islamic Taifas in the south.
If you want to see for yourself what this period of history was like, and change the
tides of history, you can recreate this for yourself in the upcoming Fate of Iberia expansion
pack for Crusader Kings III.
This pack will come out on the 31st of May and adds new events, traditions, outfits,
and music, all inspired by the Reconquista.
You can get the Fate of Iberia expansion pack, and help support the channel, by clicking
the link in the top of the description.
Okay, now to find out what happened with Ceuta.
Eventually Portugal captured the city of Ceuta from the Marinid Sultanate, a Berber kingdom
that ruled Morocco at the time.
You can even see it on the design of the Ceuta flag, featuring the same background as the
flag of Lisbon, while the coat of arms is almost the same as Portugal’s.
The area also had another geographic quirk, which served to Portugal’s advantage and
to Morocco’s detriment: the Rif Mountains, making this region considerably harder to
hold onto from the Moroccan core.
Portugal sent forces to besiege the city, however its defenders were unprepared for
the attack, which meant Portugal was able to take the city after a rather anticlimactic
siege.
With that, Portugal took control of a vital port at the mouth of the Mediterranean, not
just from the Moors, but from their rival Castile.
And it wasn’t just important for trade heading in and out of the Mediterranean, but to and
from many of the real richest powers of the time, deeper in Africa.
But instead of continuing through Ceuta as it had been, the trans-Saharan Trade simply
went through nearby Tangier instead.
In 1437 Portuguese forces tried and disastrously failed to take Tangier, and ended up signing
a deal with the Marinids, promising to give Ceuta back to them… eventually.
As Portugal began to expand all around the African coasts however, they would briefly
take nearby Ksar es-Seghir and Tangier, eventually formalizing their rule over Ceuta.
After the Iberian Union between Spain and Portugal formed in 1580, more and more Spaniards
began to move to Ceuta, gradually shifting the population from Portuguese to Spanish.
For this reason, when Portugal fought for its independence in 1640, Ceuta became one
of the few cities in Portugal’s sphere of influence to side with Spain, eventually being
formally granted to Spain in 1668.
MODERN CEUTA However for much of the 20th century, Spain
held a protectorate over northern Morocco, and in fact this station behind me used to
serve trains heading between Ceuta and the capital, Tetouan.
What I mentioned about Spain not colonizing Morocco isn’t completely true, though it
was mostly true.
In 1912, Spain’s sphere of influence over the northern Moroccan coast was turned into
a full, formal protectorate, alongside another strip in the south.
This protectorate was short-lived though, as the Spanish protectorate in Morocco combined
with French Morocco in 1956 to form… regular Morocco, though of course (despite being good
Catholics) Spain never pulled out of Ceuta and Melilla.
And now what does Morocco think about this whole arrangement?
Well given that their attempted Siege of Ceuta was the longest siege of a single city in
history, at 27 years, what do you think they think about it?
To Morocco, these cities are core territories that Spain illegally holds– a classic case
of European colonialism–, while to Spain they are centuries-old integral parts of their
nation.
Thus far, Spain doesn’t even address the issue, and even beside Spanish protectionism
there is still one major hurdle to these cities becoming Moroccan any time soon: the people
in Ceuta and Melilla, who overwhelmingly wish to remain with Spain, and who would surely
complain if they now had to take a plane to get to Spain.
To be fair to Morocco though, it’s easy to see why this drives them insane, if I were
to say it… plainly.
In a sense it almost resembles the situation with Gibraltar on the other side of the strait,
which remains a British Overseas Territory, no matter what Spain thinks of the arrangement.
In 2021 Morocco closed its northern land border with Spain, but it wasn’t because of COVID,
or at least not entirely.
This is Brahim Ghali, and when Spain allowed him to seek treatment for COVID in Logroño,
Morocco didn’t take kindly to this.
You see, Ghali is the leader of a group known as the Polisario Front, the group seeking
independence for Western Sahara from Morocco.
In the following months, Moroccan guards strangely turned a blind eye when a large group of migrants–
most from Morocco itself– made an attempt to jump the border into the Spanish cities
of Ceuta and Melilla.
This is something Morocco is normally much more proactive in, as it should be mentioned
however that, despite these disputes (and many others, like the water rights around
the Canary Islands), the two countries generally work amicably in curbing illegal immigration,
drug trafficking, and cross-border terrorism, as these cities– despite any tourism slogans
they throw around– often serve more as the gateways to Europe than to Africa.
At the end of the day though, Ceuta is essentially no different than any Spanish island city
like Palma de Mallorca or Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, just attached to Morocco.