Why is Spain an African country?

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This is the script for my video posted on May 15, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.

Did you know that for over 500 years, Spain has technically been an African country? Obviously most of Spain is in Europe, but just like French Guiana makes France a South American country, the territories of Ceuta and Melilla in north Africa give Spain a very different geopolitical footprint than any other state in Europe, and they are a key player in Spain’s heated dynamic with Morocco. So how exactly do Ceuta and Melilla play into geopolitics?

Ceuta and Melilla both sit on the North African coast of the Mediterranean Sea, with Ceuta acting as a sort of mirror to Gibraltar only 15 miles across the water, while Melilla is further down the coastline. Today, the enclaves each have about 85000 people, most of whom are Christian and Muslim. Interestingly, there are a number of other Spanish exclaves in the region too, all garrisoned by the Spanish military and called plazas de soberania, or “strongholds of sovereignty.” But other than the very tiny peninsula of Velez de la Gomera, these are all very small islands.

Way back in the year 1415, Portugal conquered Ceuta under King John I and his sons, who led their forces in a surprise assault with about 50000 Portuguese personnel on almost 250 ships. After a lot of conflict with the local Marinid sultanate, Castile recognized Portuguese rights in Morocco and Atlantic Africa, including the area where Ceuta is. But in 1578 King Sebastian of Portugal died in what is now northern Morocco and his elderly successor died just two years later, provoking the War of the Portuguese Succession won by his older Habsburg cousin King Philip of Spain, under whom the two kingdoms were joined in the Iberian Union. When the union dissolved, Ceuta refused to recognize Portugal’s new dynasty and stayed loyal to Spain, and Portugal ultimately ceded the territory officially in 1668.

Melilla has a more straightforward story. It was originally conquered by Spain in 1497 under Catholic monarchs Isabella I and Ferdinand II, and Spain took it basically without conflict because the local kingdoms of Fez and Tlemcen had fought over it repeatedly until it was in such poor shape that they each abandoned it.

Meanwhile, the Alaouite dynasty, which rules Morocco today, was founded in 1631. The Alaouites besieged Melilla in the late 17th century, but Spain managed to hold onto it, and in 1860 after the Hispano-Moroccan War, Morocco formally accepted the boundaries of Ceuta and Melilla. What all of this means is that Ceuta and Melilla have been part of Spain since long before a unified Moroccan state even existed.

But since Morocco regained its independence from France and Spain in 1956, Morocco has formally claimed the territories as their own, calling them occupied vestiges of Spain’s colonial era. In 1987, King Hassan II proposed to Spanish King Juan Carlos a mixed Moroccan-Spanish commission to study the enclaves, but this was rejected. There have been many other attempts to exert control and influence, and all of them have failed, even as Morocco has called out Spain’s hypocrisy for demanding that Britain return control of Gibraltar.

Article 6 of NATO’s treaty limits collective defense to Europe, North America, and islands north of the Tropic of Cancer. Ceuta and Melilla lie outside that geography. But in 2022 NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg explicitly stated that NATO exists to protect all of its allies against any threat, and that at the end of the day it will always be a political decision to invoke Article 5 collective action. Realistically though, there are many countries who might be willing to support Spain against a Moroccan incursion outside of NATO’s framework, because they themselves have similar territories they’d want help defending.

Ceuta and Melilla are both defended by tall and heavy layered fences, sensors, and watchtowers along with armed patrols and heavy scrutiny at its land borders, and Spain runs ID checks on everyone who enters by land or sea because they are concerned the territories could be used for smuggling and suspected terror-affiliated persons attempting to enter Europe.

Meanwhile, Ceuta and Melilla have both faced serious migration issues and potential flashpoints for conflict with Morocco. In 2021, Moroccan border forces relaxed controls on certain beaches, allowing 8000 migrants to enter Ceuta within 36 hours, largely by swimming around the breakwaters. This actually happened because Spain admitted the Secretary-General of Western Sahara’s Polisario Front, which Morocco is actively in conflict with, to a hospital for treatment under a false identity. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez flew to Ceuta, Morocco recalled its ambassador to Spain, and about 4000 people were expelled from the territory in a matter of hours.

Sanchez sent a letter to Moroccan King Mohammed VI in March 2022 that reversed 45 years of Spanish neutrality on the Western Sahara issue, formally taking Morocco’s side. But that June, Melilla experienced the deadliest event at an EU border in years. About 1300-2000 largely Sudanese, South Sudanese, and Chadian migrants attempted to scale chain link fences at a border crossing, and ultimately dozens were killed by a crowd crush and responding Spanish and Moroccan security forces. Moroccan gendarmes were implicated in most of the lethal conduct, including beating injured people and denying medical care for hours.

Back to Western Sahara though. Though Ceuta and Melilla are not geographically close to it, they are inherently entwined with its dynamics. Morocco wants Western Sahara, and it was able to get Spain to take a side through a combination of migration pressure on Spanish territory and commercial dependence, because Ceuta and Melilla would have a difficult time surviving without Moroccan trade. But the reality is, Spain really had no other choice. The enclaves truly are Spanish territory, and conceding them to Morocco would gut Spain’s own claim to Gibraltar and put them on a slippery slope to the rest of their territories being challenged as well.

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