I have previously written an article titled "Today in History| Gibraltar was occupied by the British, and now that 318 years have passed, when will it be returned? It describes how Gibraltar, which borders Spain, was forcibly occupied by the British for 318 years.
Today, we will talk about a Spanish enclave in Morocco across the Mediterranean Sea, which is also a historical issue that has been entangled between the two countries.
Let's start with how Ceuta was occupied by Spain, and in order, we'll go back and talk about why until now this place has been reluctant to return to the African country of Morocco.
How Spain occupied Ceuta
As can be seen from the map, Ceuta is just south of the Strait of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean Sea, which, if described by morocco's geographical location, should be the northeasternmost part of the country. It has an area of about 18.5 square kilometers.
Who did this place belong to? It goes back to the end of the ninth century BC. At that time, there was a particularly powerful ancient people, the Phoenicians, who lived in Lebanon and Syria on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and because they were good at navigation and business (which was also described in a previous article), they used the Mediterranean as a basis to develop their own maritime trade and expand their territory.
After two centuries of effort, the Phoenicians had developed into a powerful slave state that included the coastal regions of North Africa, southern Spain, Sicily, and Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands, monopolizing the maritime trade in the entire western Mediterranean. At that time, almost the entire Mediterranean was the domain of the Phoenicians.
So they established a city-state in each of the places they occupied, and the northernmost part of what is now Tunis is a city-state founded by the original Phoenicians, which was later set up as the capital of the Phoenicians, called Carthage, and later called the people here carthaginians.
From the fifth century BC, the Carthaginians began to rule the area of Ceuta, as it was the most important place on the southern Mediterranean trade routes, and even later became a military fortress.
But beginning in 27 BC, the rising Roman Republic, centered on the Mediterranean, threatened Carthaginian rule over these places, and there were three wars between the two for supremacy, also known as the "Punic Wars," a name derived from the fact that the Romans at the time called Carthage punici.
Ruins of the city of Carthage, Tunisia
After 118 years of three wars, the city of Carthage (northern Tunisia) was largely razed to the ground, and Rome gained hegemony in the western Mediterranean. That is, from that time on, Ceuta came under Roman rule, but this place was a very poor place at that time, and the Romans did not look at it, until later into the era of the Roman Empire, the place became just a military base to use.
It should be noted that during the Second Punic War, Ceuta, who belonged to North Africa, broke away from Carthage and became part of the Kingdom of Numidia in North Africa, so after the end of the Third Punic War, they compromised with Rome and finally avoided "genocide".
In the mid-5th century AD, the Vandals, a branch of the ancient Germanic people, historically recorded that this part of the population may have inhabited the andalusian province of present-day Spain.
The Vandals from Northern Europe all the way to North Africa
In 433 AD, they invaded these North African territories that belonged to Rome at that time, and drove the Romans from here, freed themselves from Roman suzerainty and established an independent autocratic regime. He also invaded Italy in June 455, capturing the roman city of the time, and systematically looting the city and many precious works of art.
If this period is assumed to have been occupied by the Spaniards, it is almost 1600 years.
Of course, the Visigoths and the Byzantine Empire, who later actually established a kingdom in Spain, occupied the place one after another. There have been many dynastic rule since then, but the place of Ceuta has become a base for some dynasties to invade Spain on several occasions. For example, when the Almohad dynasty replaced the Murabid dynasty in Spain, Ceuta was a springboard for the army to attack, and these dynasties were All Islamic countries. Therefore, during that time, the influence of Islam in the local area was still relatively deep.
King João I of Portugal
It was not until 1415 that King João I of Portugal captured Ceuta and began to spread Christianity to eliminate the influence of Islam in the region. And such a small place, it is said that the Portuguese occupied it in just one day, and the Portuguese navigator Prince Henry, who was the prince of the Kingdom of Portugal, the third son of King João I, was also a navigator.
Although Prince Henry, who has been stationed here for a long time, has made good progress in the open sea, but the place of Ceuta has not been particularly well developed due to the restrictions of the Moors on the North African continent. So later, in the Battle of the Three Kings, King Sebastião I of Portugal led an army deep into the North African continent, and the result was that the entire army was destroyed. The young king Sebastiao left no heirs, so the succession to the Kingdom of Portugal at that time fell into the hands of the Spaniards.
For more than seventy years, the two countries shared a single king, and it was not until the latter end of the Religious Wars (also known as the Thirty Years' War) in Europe in the 17th century that the two countries parted ways. On January 1, 1668, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Lisbon, and Portugal ceded Ceuta to Spain.
Although there were wars that followed, and even the Spanish army engaged the native Moroccan militias there, none of this affected Spanish rule over Ceuta.
Crowds in Morocco and Ceuta
On a cultural level, Ceuta, which was granted municipality status from Spain in 1995, can be considered part of the andalusian province, just 12 miles off the coast of cadiz.
As mentioned earlier, the people who lived in this place may be a branch of ancient Germanism, the Vandals, while the Moors living on the Moroccan continent belonged to the Muslims, mostly Berbers, but also some Arabs and Jews, who were driven from Spain across the Mediterranean to the North African continent, because they were previously Islamic conquerors of the Iberian Peninsula.
So, in Morocco and Ceuta, you will find that there are European buildings and white people everywhere, not at all like other African countries, there are black people everywhere. In Morocco, the official language is Arabic, and of course, French and Spanish are also their lingua franca. In Ceuta, the official language is Spanish, but Arabic and French are also common.
With the different economic developments of Morocco and Spain, there are still many people in the border areas of Ceuta and Morocco who want to smuggle into the EU in search of job opportunities.
Although Morocco has always maintained that Ceuta and Melilla, as well as some of the uninhabited islands in the Mediterranean, belong to Morocco, just as Spain has always said that Gibraltar is its own territory. But in the face of Morocco's "territorial assertion," the polemic supporting argument adopted by the Spaniards was the ownership of Istanbul, the Turkish team.
That is to say, Morocco only wants to return to Ceuta for geographical reasons, and in fact, the people in these places basically agree that they belong to Spain, just as the people of Gibraltar now agree that they belong to Britain.
In the final analysis, it is all money, if Ceuta is not following Spain into the European Union, and at the same time it is a low-tax area within the EU monetary system, which has developed very well for many years, ceuta people may be more willing to identify themselves as North African Moroccans!
So, just as Gibraltar has been occupied by the British for so many years, Ceuta, which is supposed to belong to Morocco geographically, has also been occupied by Spain for a long time.
What do you think? Feel free to leave a message in the comments section to discuss!
Tidy up ~ Boo Ya Jun
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