Editorial Culture & History Digital Journal 9(2) December 2020, e011 eISSN 2253-797X http://cultureandhistory.revistas.csic.es Local Versions and the Global Impacts of Euro-African Memories: A Revision through Spanish Colonial Imprints. Introduction SPANISH SOCIOCULTURAL IMPACT IN continuities between the methods of Spanishisation of the AFRICA: FROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL Americas and the colonisation of Africa strengthened do- mestication logics that ended up promoting certain Span- This dossier aims to analyse Spanish imprints in Eu- ish memories that remain in effect today despite their in- ro-African identities and memories in both oral and writ- accuracy (Lewis, 2007, p. 55; Resina, 2009, p. 29; Martín ten sources from a postcolonial perspective. “Memories” Márquez, 2011, p. 50; Martín Díaz et al., 2012, pp. 824- are understood as individual and collective narratives 829). Hence, this dossier raises the need to use a postco- able to shape national, ethnic and cultural identities lonial perspective as a theoretical–methodological tool to (Thompson, 1988, p. 25; Spivak, 1993, p. 76; Stoler and understand Afro-Spanish hybridisations in Africa; to Strasler, 2000, p. 7; Stoler, 2002, p. 87; Schroeter, 2018, study the Hispano-African imprints in Spain; to explain p. 1185), and “Euro-African” is used to describe the con- how Spanish identity was projected in the African colo- tacts between Europe and Africa (Aixelà-Cabré, 2017). nies; to go deeper into how postcolonial states were dis- Our objective is to reverse the constant subsuming of the torted; and to compare the how transnational and transcul- Spanish experience into other European colonialisms in tural identities have permeated. Africa. This subsidiary position has complicated the un- With these objectives, an analysis is proposed of post- derstanding of the identity hybridisation processes – both colonial identities in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Afri- local and global – (Appadurai, 1999; Bhaba, 1994; Werb- ca based on the study of its two most emblematic territo- ner, 2002; Bauman, 2006) in the African countries colo- ries, the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco and the Spanish nised by Spain. Being subsumed by, for example, French Territories of the Gulf of Guinea (also known as Spanish or Portuguese colonialism has led to certain specificities Guinea). These were the only two colonial territories becoming irrelevant and a number of mistaken equiva- where cultural coexistence with Spaniards was prolonged lences that only began to be reversed with the works of and close – the result of transfers of people and effective Pennell (2003), Jensen (2005, 2017), Miller (2013), Her- civilian settlement. This coexistence left clear traces of tel (2015), Pinhal (2017) and Calderwood (2018). This mixing between the population groups in Equatorial lack of interest has clouded the study of certain highly Guinea (less so Morocco), and contrasted with places interesting aspects of the Afro-Spanish interrelation, such such as Sidi Ifni and the Western Sahara, which were as its similarities and differences with other Euro-African principally Spanish military occupations. postcolonial legacies. This work is urgent – over a decade The final objective is to show the postcolonial impact has passed since Cooper (2005, pp. 9-10) called for a of certain experiences and memories in constructing cur- deeper review of the mutual influences between Africa rent cultural identities using a local and global frame- and Europe, and Stoler and Strassler (2000, p. 38) ex- work. Spanish colonialism and its legacies affected both plained the need: “the work of remembering other colo- the people in the colonies and the former metropole nial pasts in the form of counterhistories carries a sense of (Buettner, 2016, pp. 423-424). On the one hand, a distort- urgency as contemporary political demands are fuelled by ed ethnic empowerment and linguistic claim is emitted by indictments of colonial categories and claims”. the metropole that is able to project the culture beyond its This pluridisciplinary dossier, which includes anthro- borders and validate itself in its territory of origin (Silver- pology, history and linguistics, is therefore driven by stein, 2011, pp. 63, 71). On the other, contradictions three main arguments. First, for countries with imperial emerge from the difficult ethno-cultural reconfigurations and colonial pasts historical continuities affect the con- that call the current composition of nation-states into struction of certain othernesses in the modern era (Cor- question, hindering the national consolidation of the bas- nejo, 2007, p. 20; Delgado, 2014, pp. 28-29; Santamaría es of the recognition of a cultural pluralism that goes be- Colmenero, 2018, p. 446; García Balañà, 2019, p. 316). yond invented communities (Redclift, 2016, pp. 131-132). Second, Afro-Spanish imprints in Africa and their postco- And, of course, there is the direct impact of the memories lonial effects may be studied by examining certain highly in the former metropoles, as these constructed identities important social, ethnic, religious and linguistic facts have settled in Spanish memories of Africa (Rizo, 2012, (Stucki, 2016, p. 343-344; Castillo-Rodríguez and Mor- p. 32). These tensions around identity configuration are genthaler, 2016, p. 2; Fleisch, 2018, p. 185; Fernández, also an effect of what Vergès (2013, p. ix) called the “war 2018, p. 82; González-Vázquez, 2018, p. 143; Iliescu and of memories”, referring to monuments as spaces of fric- Bosaho, 2018, p. 210; Aixelà Cabré, 2018, p. 3). Third, tions, as reflections of the way “our memories of the past 2 • Editorial – what we choose to remember and the narratives we con- ject of historical studies that highlight their Moroccan im- struct – are shaped by our interpretation of present reali- prints (Bravo Nieto and Fernández Uriel, 2005; Villalda ties” (Barclai, 2013, p. 5). Paredes, 2009) and address their multiculturalism, reli- gious pluralism (Nair, 2008) and migrations (Rosander, SPAIN IN AFRICA 2004; Carling, 2007). The main issue is that the Spanish state considers these territories part of a national identity Spain’s colonial presence in Africa, beyond the auton- that is indissoluble because of its territorial unity in a sim- omous cities of Ceuta (1580–) and Melilla (1497–) and ilar way to other overseas European territories, such as various islets that face the Moroccan coasts, took shape in those of the Netherlands, France and the United King- the Moroccan protectorate (1912–1956), the Spanish Ter- dom, although each country manages them in different ritories of the Gulf of Guinea (1777/8–1968), Sidi Ifni ways. This hampers reflection upon their African identity (1934–1969), and the Western Sahara (1884–1976). Some or influence. of these territories faced similar consequences to other ar- In this sense it should be said that the construction of eas colonised by the British, French and Portuguese. But the Spanish nation as a territorial unity seems to a large the size of the empire and the diversity of its colonial pol- extent to be the legacy of the imperial outlook expressed icies mean the Spanish most closely recalls the Italian in its first constitution in 1812. Gareis (2005, p. 12), Ka- presence in Africa – a secondary power in possessions men (2006, p. 293) and Delgado (2014, p. 156) all claim and influence compared to the other European colonial- that Spain continued to reflect on the empire it once had ists (Calchi Novati, 2008). As in other cases, the vicissi- even when, to all practical effects, it existed only in the tudes of the metropole influenced colonial management memory, as a ‘national fantasy’. This self-identification is and negotiations over independence. In the case of Spain, a fundamental explanation for the extraordinary delay in the form of the state changed over this long time-period: granting African independences: for the Spanish state, the from the Iberian dynastic union to a monarchy in the form loss of territory was seen as the dismembering of the state of a proto-state, to the incipient state in 1812 consolidated because its collective imaginary still connected its territo- over the past two centuries by monarchical, republican rial unity with its imperial past. and dictatorial systems, and the adoption of a democratic The marginal nature of Spanish colonialism in Africa regime in 1977 following Franco’s death, eventually does not relieve it of responsibility either in those coun- sealed by a new constitution in 1978. tries’ histories or in conditioning postcolonial identities or These events had repercussions for colonised Africa, political trajectories, like any other European colonial as Spain’s colonies there sustained its conquistadorial power. Revising Spanish colonialism will help complete pretensions following the losses of Cuba and the Philip- studies on the current problems in certain regions, im- pines (Fradera, 2015, p. xxxv), which activated different prove intra-African and intra-European comparisons, and civilising rhetorics. Spanish Guinea was effectively colo- strengthen the knowledge of the range of interrelations nised at the end of the 19th century; control of the Moroc- between metropole and colonies. can protectorate was achieved in 1927; and the Western The Iberian imprint must be drawn out of its margin- Sahara and Sidi Ifni were not effectively occupied until ality. The Spanish and Portuguese influence on British, the 1940s when, primarily, military detachments and ad- Dutch and French imperial