Performing masculinity in the Moroccan theatre: virility, sexuality and Spanish military culture from the African War to the Civil War

Abstract

This article explores constructions of Spanish masculinity in the first decades of the twentieth century, as Spain engaged in colonialist wars in Morocco; memoirs and literary texts by travellers, soldiers and military leaders such as Francisco Franco and José Millán Astray are read alongside theoretical works. I argue that, like European Orientalism, Spanish Orientalism projects onto Moroccan men an image of fanaticism, barbaric violence and ultra-virile yet 'polymorphously perverse' sexuality. However, that particular image of masculinity is just as often re-assimilated into a Spanish national identity that can never quite manage to assert its fundamental difference from North Africa.

Janus in the Metropole: Moroccan Soldiers and Sexual Violence Against Women in the Spanish Civil War

“…Simultaneously, both sides used positive images to promote the idea of 'brotherhood' to fight together, although they were rarely treated as equals in practice (Alcolea 2012). Masculinity and gender issues formed part of this selfimagined identity (Martín-Márquez 2004) where 'fantasies about the savagery and hypersexuality of the Moor' helped demasculinise the enemy men and defame enemy women ('their women') (Bolorinos Allard 2016: 6).…”

International Political Sociology through the Colonial Mirror: A Contrapuntal Reading of the Spanish Civil War

“…The most promising framework with which to understand these extraordinary ideological manoeuvres in National-Catholic discourse and practice involves combining the ideas of paternalism (Wright, 2020) and brotherhood (Mateo Dieste, 2003) in the construction of a sort of fraternal tutelage which presented Spanish colonial rule in the northern Morocco as a "sentimental, not a political protectorate" (Velasco de Castro 2014: 215). As several Hispanist historians and cultural theorists have shown, the figure of the Moor -which had for centuries been represented in both high and popular culture in conflicting ways as bloodthirsty fanatic, enlightened despot, valiant warrior, duplicitous servant, or simply a noble savage -came to be glorified by the rebel side as a faithful, courageous, resilient and often eroticised fighter (Archilés 2013;Bolorinos Allard 2016;Jensen 2016;Martín Corrales 2002;Martin-Márquez 2004;Torres Delgado 2023). There was for Nationals no question of the Moroccan subordination in this relationship, but their commitment and audacity in battle indicated the Regulares shared a warrior genealogy with the best of the Iberian native sons.…”