The present study is a historiographical approach to the perspective the population in the north of Morocco had of Spain from 1860 to 1923. It analyses and outlines reflections and statements from people that lived through this time period; living and active agents located within the historical setting of the subject of study. Therefore, as a base we have employed a selection of texts, some published and some unpublished, that were written at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The authors, figures with differing intellectual and ideological educations, possessed diverse attitudes to the different historical facts of the time, and their opinions have enabled us to draw up a general conception of the collective consciousness in Morocco and the way in which this public consciousness perceived Spain’s imperialist presence in the 19th and 20th centuries. These opinions demonstrate a new time in which the hegemony of the Majzen’s intellectual monolithic system disappeared, whilst also allowing us to appreciate a new dynamic in Morocco’s social and cultural life; a dynamic affected by the typical duality of traditionalism and modernity.
Invader, protector, cabila, Majzen, Afailal, Rhouni, caliph, Tetuan.