The question of Ceuta is making some people lose their heads. How else to explain the fact that a number of Spanish journalists and commentators now dare write that “modern Morocco was born in 1956”? It is an ahistorical assertion that serves as the foundation for the argument being advanced to defend Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla. A defense so clumsy that it will inevitably backfire on those who use it.
Indeed, denying the continuity of the state and international treaties, some claim, in defiance of historical reality, that the modern Moroccan state, as an internationally recognized sovereign political entity, has existed only since 1956, the year the French protectorate ended, followed by the Spanish protectorate on April 7, 1956...
Those who dare write such an enormity are probably confusing the case of Algeria with that of Morocco. Indeed, if Algeria, which has no national past, was born in 1962 by the will of General de Gaulle, how is it possible to write that “modern” Morocco was born in 1956, when its history stretches back to the Idrissids?
By the same manipulation of history, one could argue that “modern” France was born in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille, and that “modern” Russia came into being in 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution... The absurdity of such an argument leaves any historian dumbfounded, because it implies that France and Russia had no history as states before 1789 and 1917. The 40 French kings would therefore have reigned over and administered nothing more than an unidentified space. Likewise, would the Idrissids, Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids, Saadians, Beni Wattas and Alaouites be nothing more than fictitious dynasties that ruled over a conglomeration of disparate tribes that never formed a common whole?
Algeria could naturally hardly fail to endorse such a violation of historical reality. Thus, acting as a mouthpiece for the Spanish press, El Watan ran the headline: “Morocco Never Possessed Ceuta and Melilla: Spanish Historian Raises Her Voice Against Rabat’s Claims.” Le Courrier d’Algérie, for its part, outdid itself with: “Spanish Historian Dismantles the Makhzen’s Narrative on the Paternity of Ceuta and Melilla. Pure Moroccan Fantasy.”
«Whatever certain Spanish media and Algerian newspapers may think, as I wrote in a previous column, from 788 to 1415, before becoming Portuguese and then Spanish, Ceuta-Sebta was a Moroccan city.»
— Bernard Lugan
Heir to French Algeria, to which it owes its name, its borders and all its infrastructure, Algeria—until now the self-proclaimed “champion of anti-colonialism”—has, out of hatred for Morocco, become an advocate for the Spanish Empire. Its media have indeed gleefully relayed Margarita Cecilia Torres Sevilla-Quiñones, professor of Medieval History at the University of León, whose work focuses on the medieval nobility of the kingdoms of León and Castile. It was she who, in an interview with COPE on August 21, 2026, dared claim that “until 1957, the Kingdom of Morocco did not exist.”
An argument that amounts to sophistic sleight of hand:
1- Since the Alaouite dynasty adopted the title “King of Morocco” in 1957, replacing that of Sultan, Morocco therefore did not exist as a “modern” state before that date.
2- And since modern Morocco has existed only since 1956-1957, it therefore cannot retroactively claim territories conquered by Portugal or Spain in the 15th century, well before its own formation, since Ceuta was taken by Portugal in 1415 before being transferred to Spain in 1640.
Moreover—and here we come to a genuine manipulation of history—Ceuta is said to have had a “Spanish” destiny since Antiquity, because the city was incorporated into the Roman administrative structures of Iberia and later those of the Visigoths of the Iberian Peninsula. Perhaps one might add to this curious line of argument that the links between al-Andalus and Ceuta are yet another proof of the city’s Spanish character...
Whatever certain Spanish media and Algerian newspapers may think, as I wrote in a previous column, from 788 to 1415, before becoming Portuguese and then Spanish, Ceuta-Sebta was a Moroccan city. And its Moroccan character dates back to 788, when it came under the authority of the Idrissids, founders of Morocco’s first dynasty and first state. Until 1415, apart from interludes of a few years under the rule of Córdoba or Granada, it never ceased to be Moroccan, under the Almoravids, the Almohads and then the Marinids. Moreover, after 1415, as Mouna Hachim has clearly shown in Le360, the Moroccan state, under its successive dynasties, never gave up trying to recover Ceuta. The list of expeditions and interventions undertaken to that end is well established. Margarita Cecilia Torres Sevilla-Quiñones would benefit from acquainting herself with it and from reading my History of Morocco: From Its Origins to the Present Day, which would benefit from being translated into Spanish and would spare her from talking nonsense about Morocco’s history as a state.
