Mementos of al-Andalus in Colonial Morocco

Abstract

Abstract After a summary of the Sección Femenina’s activities abroad, Chapter 3 turns its focus to the organization’s tours and educational programs within European-controlled Morocco. Between 1951 and 1953, the Sección Femenina’s troupes of Coros y Danzas (Choruses and Dances) performed for Muslim civilians and politicians throughout the Spanish Protectorate, French Protectorate, and the Tangier International Zone. Meanwhile, the Sección Femenina organized choirs of Muslims and Catholics in Tétouan, Tangier, Ceuta, and Melilla that juxtaposed Arabic folk songs with villancicos (religious carols). Throughout their work in Morocco, instructoras remodeled their repertoire and traditional costumes to emphasize Southern Spain’s allegedly lingering cultural ties to North Africa and the Middle East. This change in the Sección Femenina’s representation of Spanish music was accompanied by a change in the organization’s representation of Spanish history. Within Spain, the Sección Femenina associated itself with Queen Isabella “the Catholic” and the “heroes” of the Reconquista who purged the peninsula of the “impurities” of Moorish civilization; however, in the Spanish Protectorate, the ancient Moors were celebrated as a cultural bridge between Spain and Morocco, and Spaniards were portrayed as the cultural heirs of medieval al-Andalus. During a time of political unrest and movements for Moroccan independence, these activities were intended to promote narratives of a Moroccan-Spanish brotherhood based on myths of medieval Muslim Iberia.