MOROCCO: The Disenchanted

When the French deposed Morocco’s Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef in 1953, the rulers of adjoining Spanish Morocco could not control their gloating satisfaction. Posing as champions of the Arab world, they declared the deposition “illegal,” welcomed Moroccan nationalists from the French zone, closed their eyes to guerrilla raids on the French zone from hideouts in the Rif Mountains. Theoretically, both Moroccos are one country under the Sultan, and Spain has always resented that she holds her zone only as a sort of sublet from the French. If it were not for those nasty French, the Spanish implied broadly, they would give the Moroccans all their hearts desired. While Frenchmen lived in terror of nationalist bombs across the border, Spaniards basked in the sunshine of nationalist favor.

France’s sudden restoration of Ben Youssef caught the Spanish with their promises down. When the French pledged Morocco “independence within interdependence,” Spanish spokesmen backtracked hastily, began to talk of the necessity of “going slow.” Dictator Franco blurted that democracy in Morocco would be “disastrous,” because “we [do] not wish for the Moroccans something which is repugnant to ourselves.”

Last week the zone’s disenchanted nationalists gave Spanish Morocco its first taste of terrorism in years: a bomb burst in a Tetuan cafe, another was hurled at a bus. Demonstrators shouting for “independence and unity” stormed through Arcila.

Suddenly, Spain began to talk more kindly of cooperation with France. With a faintly patronizing air, French Resident General André Louis Dubois drove over to the Spanish zone for a “courtesy” call on his Spanish counterpart, Lieut. General Rafael Garcia Valino. Dubois’ main concern was to get Spanish cooperation in halting the Rif raids across the border. Garcia Valino seized the opportunity to announce Spain would introduce political reforms to institute “parallel evolution” in its zone. At week’s end, Franco conferred long and late with his Cabinet, authorized a guarded statement promising that Spain would “follow attentively” events in the French zone “with the object of attaining the desires of the Moroccan people without harming the legitimate interests of the Spanish nation.”

It posed quite a problem for Fascist Franco. As one Spanish observer said: “What are we going to do? Let them have a parliamentary democracy when we have none here? Permit them to have a free press when our own papers are censored? Give the workers economic rights when they are denied in Spain? No, we can’t do it.”