We Have Come Back Home: The Spanish-Moroccan Community, Collective Memory, and Sacred Spaces in Contemporary Spain

Abstract

This paper examines the role of Islamic sacred spaces in Spanish-Moroccan identity negotiations in contemporary Madrid, Spain. In doing so, I explore how these sacred sites produce diverse meanings and practices that resist the Spanish states hegemonic narratives of place. I argue that the multilayered resistance via the “memory” and “place” of these sacred sites ostensibly reconciles and situates Spanish-Moroccans within the larger Spanish imagined community. The paper will first discuss the trans-local experiences of the Spanish-Moroccan community and how their liminal state of being neither “here or there” necessitates an anchor (Muslim sacred spaces) to the new home context. I will then outline a brief historical narrative of the Muslim presence in Spain and then analyze the meanings attached to the sacrality of Islamic monuments and mosques to the Spanish-Moroccan community. Finally, the paper will explore how the historical memories and their discursive meanings attached to these sacred sites allow Spanish-Moroccans to produce counterhegemonic frameworks that challenge and reshape nationalistic spaces.

The silent inquisition: Islamophobic microaggressions and Spanish Moroccan identity negotiations in contemporary Madrid

“…Alcántara-Plá and Ruiz-Sánchez (2017: 17) found that Islamophobic ideologies are so embedded in the Spanish media that when Muslims are mentioned on Spanish social networking sites, they are framed as military invaders and historical enemies. Other recent studies have examined the intersectional perspectives between Islamophobia and ethnicity (Bravo López, 2012), gender (Ramírez and Mijares, 2018), patriarchy (Guia, 2018), collective memory (Ouassini, 2019), immigration (Cea d'Ancona, 2016, policing and social control (Álvaro et al, 2015), recognition struggles (Dietz, 2004), and the impact of secular political identities on the presence of Islam in Spain (López Bargados, 2018).…”