When Spain meets Morocco: discourses, language choices and linguistic policy in Ceuta and Melilla

This article is based on field-work for a post-doc research project exploring the linguistic and cultural relations between Spain and Morocco in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla situated in Northern Morocco. Such academic interest in the enclaves is a novel addition to the traditional field of Hispano-Arabistics that mainly focuses on al-Andalus studies (Knoerrich 2007). In this paper, some general observations and an overview of the demography and culture of the enclaves are given and some examples of discourse are shown. After that, the linguistic choices as well as some examples of language contact from the corpus are presented. Finally, the conflicts and the actions taken in the realm of linguistic policy are outlined and solutions are suggested. 1. General observations Ceuta and Melilla are two Spanish urban enclaves situated in the North of Morocco. Ceuta is a peninsula that is surrounded by the Mediterranean to the North, East and South, and which shares an 8 km land border with Morocco to the East. Melilla faces the sea in the Northeast and East, whereas its land border with Morocco in the Northwest, West and in the South measures about 20 km. The land borders of the enclaves are fortified by a fence system that was reinforced after 2005 and that prevents illegal immigration to the enclaves. The land area of the enclaves is quite small. Ceuta originally had a surface area of 18.5 km that was extended to 23 km by land reclamation. The coast is about 20 km long (Ceuta Digital / Visitor information / Climate and Geography). Melilla, in contrast, has a surface area of 12.4 km, and a coast of approximately 8 km in length. Ceuta is a 45-minute-ship-journey from the port of Algeciras on the Spanish mainland, and, since there is not enough surface for an airport, only a regular helicopter line connects it to Malaga. Melilla is a 7-hour-ship-journey from the port of Malaga, but three different air companies serve its small airport from the Spanish mainland. The strength of the relations between the Spanish mainland, the enclave and theMoroccan hinterland is not the same in both places. Since the distance between Ceuta and the Spanish peninsula is very short, the inhabitants of the Isabel A. Knoerrich Aldabo 104 enclave travel frequently to the mainland, thus depending less on the Moroccan hinterland than their compatriots in Melilla do. The cities use to be named by the binom of Ceuta y Melilla, which creates the impression of twin cities. However, they have no direct connection by air and by sea, whileby land, they are 500 km from one another. The similarities thus refer to their political, legal and even economic status, but not to their linguistic and cultural conditions. Ceuta is mainly bilingual, whereas Melilla has to be considered trilingual. The Moroccan Berber population of Melilla seems to have a less conflictive relation with the Spanish population than the mainly Arab one of Ceuta does. According to my observations and questions, the Ceutíes seem to be less aware of those inter-enclave differences than the Melillenses. In Spain, only a minority of people have further insight and detailed knowledge of the enclaves, whereas most Europeans are not aware of their existence, admitting that they heard the first time about Ceuta and Melilla in 2005, when the international media reported massively about illegal migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa who had climbed over the enclaves’ fences with the help of self-made steps. Thanks to the media reports, recognition of the enclaves’ names increased, but they also gained a negative reputation as transit points for migrants to Europe. Due to their political context, they have often been qualified as ‘anachronic’ or as ‘colonial relicts’, an expression that was brought up by the Moroccan King Hassan II (*1929– †1999, reign from 1961‒1999) in the 1970s. 2. Literature Review and Methodology The literature review shows that there are a number of anthropological and socio-political studies (Meyer 2005; Gold 2000; Planet Contreras 1998; Driessen 1992; Rosander 1991) that refer to Ceuta and Melilla, whereas there are only very few linguistic analyses of these areas. However, the linguistic situation of these North Moroccan enclaves is particularly interesting. Ruiz Domínguez (1998) and González Las (1991; 1987) concentrated on the Castilian variety of Melilla and did not take the multilingual situation there into consideration. On the other hand, multilingualism has been discussed in relation to local education (Mesa / Sánchez 1996), since the dropout rate at primary and secondary level is very high among students of Moroccan origin. Vicente (2005; 2004a; 2004b; 2003) has studied mainly the diatopic and diastratic features of the Moroccan variety of Ceuta, since her main interest focuses on age and gender differences in Arabic dialects. Nevertheless, some evidence about the codeswitching phenomena of Moroccan Arabic and Castilian was also given (Vicente 2003), taking lexical borrowings and transpositions of complete sentences into consideration. When Spain meets Marocco 105 The enclaves have had an impact on the survival of Castilian language of all Northern Morocco (Knoerrich 2007; Quilis 1998), which was a Spanish colony from 1860 and a protectorate from 1912 to 1956. There is a research gap with regard to a consistent study of language contact, the relation between the two main communities and a conflict analysis that includes the linguistic and cultural aspects that are at stake. Therefore, the current study has various objectives: to produce a general overview of the history, politics and economy of the enclaves, as requested by students on the occasion of seminars; to compile and to analyze self-produced discourses as well as media discourses referring to the enclaves, since they are highly iconized places within the framework of Hispano-Arabistics; to test cultural and intercultural theories to work out and to explain the relations between the communities; to compare Castilian and Moroccan Arabic at a typological level; to document and to analyze the locals’ linguistic choices and their code-switching; and to describe and to evaluate the measures taken in linguistic policy. The conflictive linguistic policy as well as the conflictive cultural relations will be analyzed within the two paradigms of risk perception theory and conflict analysis that are applied in International Relations studies, which guarantees an interdisciplinary approach. The methodological approach includes participant observation, auditive selection, questionnaires, interviews, as well asuse of press clippings and of official documents. 3. Historical overview The enclaves have been connected to crucial events in Spain’s history. Under the authority of Isabel I of Castile (*1451–†1504, reign 1479‒1504), Melilla was conquered in 1497 by the duke of Medina Sidonia. This act was related to the Reconquista and Spain’s wish to control the North African coast in view of the Ottoman expansion. King João I of Portugal (*1357– †1433, reign 1385‒1433) took Ceuta in 1415 from Moroccan rule with the aim of controlling navigation of the African coast. When Spain seized the Portuguese crown in 1580, people of Spanish origin began to settle in Ceuta. The importance of the Spanishness of Ceuta is strongly related to the testament of Isabel I of Castile, who wanted Spain to be protected against a return of the Moors after the Reconquista. Portugal regained its independence in 1640, and a referendum was held in Ceuta in which the electorate decided to belong to Spain. With the conclusion of the Treaty of Lisbon in 1668, Portugal ceded the city formally and definitively to Spain. In the following centuries, both Ceuta and Melilla were attacked and besieged by local tribes and by Moroccan rulers with the intention to seize them from Spanish rule and to reintegrate them into the Moroccan territory. FurtherIsabel A. Knoerrich Aldabo 106 more, in 1859, Spain instigated a dispute over the borders of Ceuta and Melilla, which would be a pretext for the Spanish-Moroccan War, also known as the African War. During the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco (1912–1956), Ceuta and Melilla were considered part of the Spanish state and not part of the Protectorate’s territory. Both places were the starting point for the Fascist movement of General Francisco Franco (*1892– †1975), who was commander of the Spanish Army in Africa and whose uprisings would later lead to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) that ended with his victory and dictatorship (1939–1975) of Spain. When Morocco gained independence in 1956, Spain did not consider rendering the enclaves to the North African kingdom, since they had been integrated into the Spanish state and had the status of plazas de soberanía. In 1975, Morocco raised the question of the enclaves at the U.N. Special Committee of the 24 on Decolonization that rejected the claim, emphasizing the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla. At an international level, a wide array of interests have often been at stake in these regions. For example, during the Cold War, Ceuta was of high strategic interest for NATO as it is located opposite Gibraltar, which has been a British enclave in Spain since the 18 century. This constellation guarantees full European control of the Strait of Gibraltar. Morocco has used its claims on the both enclaves to obtain economic and even military aid from Spain and from the European Union. When Spain joined the European Union in 1986, Ceuta and Melilla became part of the EU territory with external EU-borders, but the EU customs regulation did not apply to them. Historically, Ceuta belonged to the province of Cádiz and Melilla to the province of Málaga, a fact that is still reflected in many contexts that follow an official regional division, like telephone area codes, list of bank branch offices, etc. During Spain’s decentralization process, Ceuta and Melilla did not become fully a