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Marrakech – Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita has outlined comprehensive measures to protect Moroccan nationals in Spain from racist incidents, responding to parliamentary concerns about rising discrimination against the community.
In a written response to a parliamentary question from Khalid Setti representing the National Union of Labor in Morocco’s House of Councilors, Bourita detailed his ministry’s approach to combating racist attacks on Moroccans living in Spain.
“Protection of rights and interests of Moroccans abroad constitutes a central priority in Moroccan diplomacy work,” Bourita stated, citing directives from King Mohammed VI and constitutional provisions under Article 16.
The minister mapped out direct intervention protocols when racist incidents occur. Morocco’s embassy in Madrid coordinates closely with consular centers across Spain to respond immediately to discriminatory attacks against Moroccan citizens through field interventions and official communications.
“The embassy establishes direct contact with officials in various Spanish ministries and government delegates at regional levels to obtain official updated information and follow procedures taken to address these acts and ensure their non-repetition,” Bourita explained.
Support measures include accompanying victims through necessary legal procedures and communicating with competent Spanish authorities. The ministry activates bilateral consultation mechanisms to urge host country governments to adopt preventive and deterrent measures against hate crimes.
Bourita noted that diplomatic missions work to counter what he termed “slanders” often promoted about the Moroccan community. These typically concern isolated incidents or actions wrongly attributed to Moroccans, while drawing attention to the important economic and social role of Moroccans in Spain as major contributors to the labor market and social security system.
Spain’s ‘Morocco complex’ persisted visibly
The minister’s response follows escalating tensions that reached crisis proportions in July. In Torre-Pacheco, southeastern Spain, a wave of anti-migrant violence and xenophobic attacks specifically targeted Moroccan and North African residents and workers.
The unrest began after reports that a 68-year-old local man was allegedly assaulted by three men of North African origin, which was rapidly amplified on social media and used to fuel anger against migrants.
Far-right groups and local residents organized rallies and street confrontations. Dozens of people were assaulted, businesses and homes of foreign origin were attacked, and groups armed with bats and pepper spray roamed streets seeking people of North African background.
Calls on social media to “hunt down” migrants and anti-immigrant narratives circulated widely, contributing to several nights of clashes with police and multiple arrests.
Spanish and Moroccan authorities condemned the racism and called for calm as tensions rose over what was seen as racially motivated violence against the Moroccan community.
This contemporary manifestation of anti-Moroccan sentiment reveals deeper historiographical anxieties embedded within Spanish collective consciousness.
The recurring specter of Moorish return constitutes a foundational civilizational anxiety that permeates Spanish imaginaries, functioning as what scholars term a “contact zone” of perpetual tension between Christian and Islamic civilizations.
The persistence of what analysts describe as Spain’s “Morocco complex” demonstrates how colonial and post-colonial power dynamics continue to structure bilateral relations.
This psychological framework transforms Morocco from neighboring state into symbolic “Other” through which Spain negotiates unresolved questions about empire, religion, and European identity.
The fall of al-Andalus, Morisco expulsions, and subsequent protectorate experiences created dense archival memories positioning Morocco simultaneously as lost mirror and permanent frontier.
Fear becomes electoral capital
Contemporary far-right movements, including Vox party exploit these historical anxieties, constructing narratives of civilizational threat that resonate with segments of Spanish society harboring nostalgic attachments to mythologized Christian reconquest.
The party’s electoral discourse frequently invokes tropes of Islamic invasion, demographic replacement, and the specter of the “return of the Moro,” mobilizing what Benedict Anderson conceptualized as “imagined community” boundaries against perceived external threats.
By resurrecting the historical figure of the “Moro” as a civilizational antagonist, this rhetoric collapses contemporary migration and regional geopolitics into a mythologized narrative of reconquest, in which modern Moroccan presence is framed as the continuation of a centuries-old invasion.
In doing so, the party converts historical memory into a political weapon, transforming cultural anxiety into electoral capital and reasserting exclusionary definitions of national belonging through fear-laden appeals to an embattled collective identity.
Bourita identified underlying causes of racist practices against immigrants generally and Moroccan community members specifically.
These stem from misconceptions based on misleading information about others and intolerance of differences, alongside influence from extremist media discourse that exploits prejudices and incorporates them into anti-foreigner agendas.
“Recent racist attacks in some Spanish cities, while concerning, do not reflect a general anti-foreigner or specifically anti-Moroccan climate,” Bourita stated. “Reactions to these acts are often characterized by rejection and condemnation from the beginning.”
The theoretical framework of postcolonial studies reveals that Spanish anxiety about Morocco operates not merely as geopolitical concern, but as a displaced form of imperial nostalgia. This anxiety is rooted in the psychological and political residue of Spain’s withdrawal from its former North African colonies – a withdrawal that was never fully processed or reconciled.
The continued sovereignty of Ceuta and Melilla as Spanish enclaves on the African continent functions as a materialized testament to this unresolved colonial legacy, visible markers of an empire that remains psychologically unclosed.
At the same time, enduring Spanish support for Western Sahara independence movements cannot be understood simply as normative championing of self-determination; rather, it functions as a strategic projection of Spanish influence and a proxy mechanism to limit Moroccan regional ascendancy.
In this configuration, the Western Sahara question becomes less about principle and more about a postcolonial power’s attempt to negotiate its diminished status by sustaining conflict zones that inhibit a neighboring state’s consolidation of authority.
Through these dynamics, the Spanish-Moroccan relationship is shaped by the lingering spectrality of empire – where territorial enclaves and proxy allegiances become instruments through which unresolved colonial affect and strategic anxieties are perpetuated.
Cultural diplomacy counters racist practices
Cultural initiatives form part of Morocco’s preventive strategy. The ministry relies on cultural dimensions as fundamental approaches to confronting racist practices. Cultural centers abroad, including the Three Cultures Foundation in Seville, work to build cultural bridges and promote Moroccan culture while fostering dialogue, coexistence, and respect for others’ specificities.
Regarding Arabic language education concerns raised in Setti’s question, Bourita disclosed that Morocco’s Madrid embassy immediately contacted the Spanish foreign and education ministries after confirming Madrid and Murcia regions’ withdrawal from agreements for Arabic language and Moroccan culture education programs.
The embassy requested information about the decision reasons and stressed the importance of reversing the decision, but received no response.
Morocco’s diplomatic mission participated in the sixteenth meeting of the joint committee responsible for Arabic language and Moroccan culture education program on July 18 at Spain’s Education Ministry headquarters.
Spanish Education Ministry representatives confirmed regional educational authorities possess full authority to cancel the program while expressing regret about the decision.
“Ministry services remain mobilized to follow and accompany Moroccan citizens abroad in various situations they face,” Bourita concluded. “We dedicate available resources to defend them and confront all malicious campaigns against them, which are often driven by political agendas rather than genuine societal feelings of hostility or hatred.”
The minister’s response comes as recent polling shows 28% of Spaniards consider war with Morocco possible, with 42.2% of those contemplating conflict identifying Morocco as a potential adversary.
Read also: Moroccans Top List of Foreigners Suffering From Hate Crimes in Spain
