Spanish West Africa

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Spanish possessions in northwestern Africa (as of 1916, before the amalgamations)

Spanish West Africa ( Spanish África Occidental Española ) referred to a Spanish colony in northwest Africa , which was created in 1946 with the merger of the Spanish possessions Ifni and Spanish Sahara . It was over 250,000 km² in size, the capital was the town of Villa Bens , which was outside the colony in the Protectorate Cape Juby , which was formally considered a part of Morocco administered by Spain. The official languages were Spanish and Arabic . After the Ifni War in 1958, the colony was again divided into the "Overseas Province of Spanish Sahara" ( Provincia Española del Sáhara ) and Ifni.

history

As early as 1934, the High Commissioner of Spanish Morocco became governor of Infi, Saguia el Hamra and Río de Oro at the same time . With the establishment of Spanish rule, an intensive search for mineral raw materials began. In 1949, significant phosphate deposits were discovered in Spanish West Africa . The entire Spanish civil administration comprised 216 people in 1952, 155 of them locals. The budget in the same year was 19.7 million pesetas , half of which was spent on the police.

At the beginning of the 1950s, local tribal warriors took part in battles against the French colonial power in Morocco, in return the Moroccan government offered its help in the fight against the Spanish colonial rulers after Morocco gained independence in 1956. Regular Moroccan troops, together with tribal warriors, attacked Spanish border posts and bases, which expanded into the Ifni War in 1957/58. On November 12, 1957, Morocco formally laid claim to Spanish West Africa. After a Spanish offensive in January / February 1958, the Moroccan armed forces were on the defensive, so that in April 1958 the war was ended by the Angra de Cintra Agreement . Cape Juby , which had been administered by the governor of Spanish West Africa until then , and the southern part of the Protectorate of Spanish Morocco, fell back to Morocco, while the administratively separate areas of Ifni and Spanish Sahara remained under Spanish control.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ursel Clausen: The conflict over the Western Sahara. Work from the Institut für Afrika-Kunde, 1978, p. 11
  2. ↑ Basic data on worldstatesmen.org (engl.)
  3. ↑ Spanish Sahara Timeline (Eng.)
  4. ↑ History of Western Sahara at www.worldstatesmen.org (Eng.)

literature