Rodger Sherman
Eve already took a look at Spain’s touchy relationship with Morocco, but the blog I’m looking at brings a slightly different perspective.
Colonialism, with few exceptions, is dead. However, Spain takes pride in its possessions in Morocco. It sets up border fences around the two enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla – Sebta and Mellilia, to the Moroccans – to prevent influx of Moroccan immigrants, and when I was in Spain four or five years ago, had images on the back of the 50 peseta coins featuring Ceuta and Melilla much in the same way our quarters each have pictures of states. And a few years ago, Spanish and Moroccan forces almost came to blows over who possessed an island off of the Moroccan coast whose inhabitants mainly consisted of goats.
This should not be. As we have seen in Tunisia, a relationship between an ex-colonial power and an ex-colony needs not be a strained one. And the situation presented by these colonies is one which has been succesful in other parts of the world – an region run by an economically powerful government in an area run by a fairly weak government. Obviously, it’s a situation quite different from the death of British and Portuguese colonies of Macau and Hong Kong, both wildly successful now, but what those examples do tell me is that colonialism is completely unnecessary – in fact, probably restraining – in 2007. Let Ceuta and Melilla return to Morocco. Morocco needs help from Spain to be successful, but it doesn’t need Spain inside Morocco.
