Morocco–Spain relations
Morocco and Spain maintain extensive diplomatic, commercial, and military ties. Morocco’s foreign policy has focused on Western partners, including neighboring Spain. They have, however, been historically intense and conflictive. History Precedents After crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in 711, Muslims from North Africa led by the Umayyad commander Tariq ibn Ziyad seized the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania in the wake of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. In the first generations after the conquest, the African Romance (argued to be part of a continuum with Ibero-Romance) presumably spoken by the Berber invaders may have facilitated communication with the native population, prior to the latter's arabization. Following the Abbasid takeover of the Umayyad caliphate, a branch of Umayyads established an independent Córdoba-centered Islamic polity in the Iberian Peninsula (initially an emirate and later a caliphate), which lasted until its demise in the early 11th century and ensuing replacement by ephemeral Islamic statelets. In the 10th century, Córdoba waged an expansionist policy to expand its clout in the Maghreb, vying a struggle against the Fatimid Empire. Under the Almoravid and the Almohad dynasties, both of which had Marrakesh as a capital, most of the Muslim-controlled territory in the Iberian Peninsula came under Maghrebi imperial rule. Vowing to counter the Castilian expansion initiated by 1265, Nasrid Granada required assistance from Fez in late 1274 and ceded the places of Algeciras and Tarifa to the Marinids, which thus gained a foothold in the southernmost end of the Iberian Peninsula. The Marinid grip over Algeciras further increased in the ensuing decades, and the place turned into a Marinid power base from which razzias were launched into the still incipient Christian settlements in the Lower Guadalquivir and the Guadalete area. In the aftermath of the Granada War, the Catholic Monarchs, with the Alhambra Decree of 1492, ordered the expulsion of the Jews from the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Many of these Jewish refugees settled in the territory of current-day Morocco. Some 40,000 Moriscos arrived there after their final expulsion in 1609, dressed in the Spanish way and speaking Spanish. Unlike their more welcoming situation in other places of the Maghreb such as Tunis, they were generally not well received, were accused of being Christians and sometimes suffered martyrdom. Morisco refugees from Hornachos founded the pirate Republic of Salé on the Bou Regreg river bank. The cession of Larache effectively took place on 20 November 1610, when Juan de Mendoza y Velasco, Marquis of San Germán, assumed control over the Atlantic port of Larache on behalf of the Hispanic Monarchy. The harbour had been promised by Mohammed esh Sheikh el Mamun in exchange for the Spanish support in the internal struggles of the Saadi sultanate against his brother Zidan Abu Maali. The place remained under Spanish control until 1689, when it was seized by the troops of the Alaouite sultan Ismail Ibn Sharif. In 1612, Spanish privateers stole the Zaydani Library, a collection of an estimated 4,000 manuscripts in literature and science belonging to Sultan