Spanish West Africa

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Spanish West Africa
África Occidental Española
Spanish colony
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Flag
Northwestern African territories under Spanish control in 1912, some of which would later be grouped to form Spanish West Africa.
Capital Villa Cisneros
Language(s) Spanish, Arabic
Religion Roman Catholicism, Islam
Political structure Colony
Royal Commissioner
 - 1885-1886 Emilio Bonelli Hernando
Governor
 - 1946-1949 (first) José Bermejo López
 - 1958 (last) José Héctor Vázquez
High Commissioner
 - 1939-40 (first) Juan Beigbeder y Atienza
 - 1951-56 (last) Rafael García Valiño y Marcén
History
 - Established December 26, 1946
 - Disestablished April 10, 1958
Currency Spanish peseta

Spanish West Africa (Spanish: (Territorios de) África Occidental Española) is a former possession in the western Sahara Desert that Spain ruled after giving much of its former northwestern African possessions to Morocco. As a political entity, it included Ifni, on the western coast of Morocco, the Tarfaya Strip, at its southern border, and a stretch of land including and connecting the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. The area between the two cities is under Moroccan sovereignty today, but the ports themselves are autonomous communities of Spain.

Spain also controlled Spanish Sahara (now known as Western Sahara), and the Canary Islands, off the coast, comprise two Spanish provinces.


History

Spanish penetration

The first Spaniard arrived in western Africa at the end of the Middle Ages. The very first may have been the Catalonian traveller Jaume Ferrer who disappeared in 1375 on the journey off the African coast,[1] or one of the Castilians who landed at Boujdour in 1405 and attacked a caravan there.[2]

Governors

References

  1. ^ Russell, Peter E. (1995) Portugal, Spain, and the African Atlantic, 1343-1490: chivalry and crusade from John of Gaunt to Henry the Navigator, Varorium.
  2. ^ {cite article|url=http://www.zmne.hu/aarms/docs/Volume9/Issue2/pdf/01.pdf%7Ctitle=Western-Sahara under the Spanish Empire|last=Besenyǒ|first=János|year=2010|accessdate=9 April 2012|journal=AARMS|volume=9|issue=2|pages=195-215}

See also


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