Spain today parades itself as a champion of Palestinian liberation, a voice of conscience in Europe, and a state that dares to lecture Israel on morality, sovereignty, and the rights of peoples under occupation. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government has recognized Palestine as a state, imposed a full arms embargo on Israel, canceled defense contracts with Israeli companies, banned refueling operations for Israeli aircraft in Spanish ports, and even called for Israel to be barred from international sporting events.

Madrid summoned its ambassador from Tel Aviv after Israeli sanctions on Spanish ministers, condemned “indiscriminate killings” in Gaza, and sought to make itself the spearhead of European outrage against Netanyahu’s war. On the surface, Spain looks like a small European power punching above its weight to defend human rights, waving the banner of anti-occupation politics at a time when others equivocate.

But scratch beneath the surface and the hypocrisy is staggering, for the very same Spain that sermonizes about occupation abroad clings stubbornly to its own colonial possessions in North Africa. Ceuta and Melilla, fortified enclaves on Moroccan soil, remain under the Spanish flag.

The Chafarinas Islands, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, Isla del Congreso, Isla del Rey, Isla de Isabel II, and even tiny Perejil Island, wrested back by Spanish commandos in 2002 after Moroccan soldiers briefly raised their own flag there, all continue to symbolize Madrid’s refusal to shed the vestiges of empire.

These Plazas de Soberanía (“territories of sovereignty”), as Madrid euphemistically calls them, are relics of empire: rocky fortresses, garrisoned by soldiers, symbolic outposts of Spain’s refusal to decolonize fully. Spain denounces Israel’s annexations in the West Bank while maintaining its own annexations on Africa’s Mediterranean coastline. It calls for decolonization in Palestine while perpetuating colonization in Morocco.

Justice abroad means nothing without justice nearby

The duplicity is not new. Spain’s presence in North Africa is not the residue of some benign historical arrangement, but the outcome of violent conquest, opportunistic treaties, and the cynical chess of European empires. Ceuta was seized in 1415 by Portugal and only transferred to Spain in the 17th century, while Melilla was captured in 1497 in the wake of Granada’s fall, its seizure justified by the language of “civilization” that European crowns wielded to cloak raw imperial domination.

These were never organic extensions of Iberian identity but garrison towns and bargaining chips in the scramble for Mediterranean influence. Madrid now insists that Ceuta and Melilla are “autonomous cities,” constitutionally equal to Madrid, Barcelona, or Seville. Yet geography betrays the lie: they are fenced-off enclaves on African soil, ringed with barbed wire, double fences, watchtowers, and EU-financed surveillance drones – Europe’s militarized southern border posts where African migrants are beaten back or left to drown.

To call them ordinary parts of Spain is to perpetuate a colonial fiction, one that United Nations principles on the inadmissibility of acquiring territory by force condemn just as clearly as Israel’s settlements. But where Madrid demands Israel comply with international law, it demands silence on its own case. This is not law – it is colonial exceptionalism dressed in democratic language.

The 2021 diplomatic crisis between Morocco and Spain cannot truly be resolved until Madrid confronts the corrosive role of its remaining colonies in Africa. That crisis began when Spain secretly admitted Polisario leader Brahim Ghali under a false identity for medical treatment, provoking one of the worst bilateral ruptures in decades: Rabat recalled its ambassador, froze political contacts, and allowed migratory pressure at the Ceuta border to explode in May 2021.

Trust collapsed entirely, and only after months of tension was dialogue restored in 2022, following Madrid’s recalibration of its position on Western Sahara. Yet while that tactical shift reopened channels, the underlying source of friction – Spain’s colonial hold over Ceuta, Melilla, and the surrounding islets – still festers. Until Madrid confronts that colonial residue, reconciliation will remain partial, fragile, and permanently vulnerable to collapse.

Far from being integral to Spain, Ceuta........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)