Western Sahara: The Last and Lasting Colonial Conflict in Africa

Abstract

The notion of a Hispano-Maghrebi fraternity that characterized the Spanish colonial discourse throughout most of the twentieth century shifted its emphasis in the final years of the Francoist regime presenting Moroccans as others and Saharawis¹ as brothers. This fraternal rhetoric has survived until the present. Since the Spanish transition to democracy in 1978, the notion of a Hispano-Saharawi brotherhood has gradually ceased to be associated with Francoist colonial discourse and been presented as a progressive concept that is deemed to exemplify an anticolonial stance. If the Hispano-Saharawi fraternal rhetoric had until that point been part of the hegemonic discourse of the state, its more recent rearticulation has taken place in the realm of popular culture.