April 1, 1958 – Ifni War: The Treay of Angra de Cintra is signed, where Spain cedes Cape Juby and Tarfaya Strip to Morocco

Toward the end of the Ifni War, Mohammed V, the Moroccan king, who officially had remained neutral during the fighting, now appeared to take the side of the Europeans.  The governments of Spain and Morocco opened negotiations to resolve the conflict.  On April 1, 1958, the two sides signed the Treaty of Angra de Cintra, where Spain ceded Cape Juby and Tarfaya Strip to Morocco.  The war officially ended on June 30, 1958 when the danger to the Spanish-held city of Sidi Ifni passed.  Much of the Ifni region was in enemy possession, which subsequently was annexed by Morocco.

Spain maintained only an uncertain hold on Sidi Ifni, primarily because of foreign pressures.  In December 1960, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1514 that called for the end of colonial rule and granting of independences to colonized peoples around the world.  By the end of the 1960s, many colonial powers had relinquished their territorial possessions, leading to the emergence of many new independent states.  Faced with diplomatic pressures, on June 30, 1969, Spain ceded Sidi Ifni to Morocco.  Within a few years, the focus of Spain’s decolonization of North Africa shifted to Spanish Sahara; Spain’s subsequent relinquishing of this region in November 1975 soon led to another war (this time not involving Spain, the Western Sahara War, next article).

Spanish possessions in northwest Africa with adjacent countries.

(Taken from Ifni WarWars of the 20th Century – Volume 4)

Background In 1956, Morocco gained full independence after France and Spain ended their 44-year protectorate and returned political and territorial control to Mohammed V, the Moroccan Sultan.  A period of rising tensions and violence had preceded Morocco’s independence which nearly broke out into open hostilities.  While France fully ended its protectorate, Spain only did so with its northern zone, retaining control of the southern zone (consisting of Cape Juby and the interior area called the Tarfaya Strip).  At Morocco’s independence, apart from Morocco’s southern zone, Spain held a number of other territories in North Africa that the Spanish government viewed as integral parts of Spain (i.e. they were not colonies or protectorates); these included Ceuta and Melilla which Spain had controlled since the 1500s; Plazas de soberanía (English: Places of sovereignty), a motley of tiny islands and small areas bordering the Moroccan Mediterranean coastline; and Spanish Sahara, a vast territory half the size of mainland Spain that the Spanish government had gained in 1884 as a result of the Berlin Conference during the period known as the “Scramble for Africa”, where European powers wrangled for their “share” of Africa.

Spain declared having historical ties, by way of the Spanish Empire, to the Ifni region (traced incorrectly to Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña, a 15th century Spanish settlement which was actually located further south of Ifni), Villa Cisneros, founded in 1502 and located in Spanish Sahara, and the Plazas de soberanía.  In 1946, Spain merged the regions of Ifni, Cape Juby and Tarfaya Strip (southern zone of the Spanish protectorate), and Spanish Sahara into a single administrative unit called Spanish West Africa (Figure 13).

The Ifni region, which had at its capital the coastal city of Sidi Ifni, would become the focal point as well as lend its name to the coming war.  After its defeat in the Spanish-Moroccan War in April 1860, Morocco ceded Ifni to Spain as a result of the Treaty of Tangiers.

Shortly after Morocco gained its independence, an ultra-nationalist movement, the Istiqlal Party led by Allal Al Fassi, advocated “Greater Morocco”, a political ideology that desired to integrate all territories that had historical ties to the Moroccan Sultanate with the modern Moroccan state.  As envisioned, Greater Morocco would consist of, apart from present-day Morocco itself, western Algeria, Mauritania, and northwest Mali – and all Spanish possessions in North Africa.

Officially, the Moroccan government did not subscribe to or espouse “Greater Morocco”, but did not suppress and even tacitly supported irredentist advocates of this ideology.  As a result, the Moroccan Army did not actively participate in the coming war; instead, the Moroccan Army of Liberation (MAL), which was an assortment of several Moroccan militias that had organized and risen up against the French protectorate, carried out the war against the Spanish (and French).

Shortly after Morocco gained its independence, civil unrest broke out in Ifni, which included anti-Spanish protest demonstrations and violence targeting police and security forces.  Infiltrators belonging to MAL later began supporting these activities.  The unrest prompted the central government in mainland Spain, led by General Francisco Franco, to send Spanish troops, including units of the Spanish Legion, to Spanish West Africa, whose security units until then consisted mostly of personnel recruited from the local population.

Meanwhile, MAL militias, comprising some 4,000–5,000 Moukhahidine (“freedom fighters”) and led by Ben Hamou, a Moroccan former mercenary officer of the French Foreign Legion, had deployed near southern Moroccan and Spanish Sahara, and soon were joined by Sahrawi Berber and Arab fighters; at their peak, some 30,000 revolutionaries would take part in the conflict.

War Fighting took place along two sectors: in the Ifni region in and around Sidi Ifni, and in Spanish Sahara.  In the Ifni region, on October 21, 1957, some 1,500 MAL fighters (out of the 2,000 total deployed in this area), seized the villages of Goulimine and Bou Izarguen, just outside Sidi Ifni.  Then on November 23, the revolutionaries cut the communication lines, isolating Sidi Ifni from Spanish Sahara, and then launched their attack on the capital.  The Spanish defenders in Sidi Ifni who held several outposts outside the city were subjected to strong attacks and became isolated.  At Tiluin, the sixty-man Spanish garrison came under siege, necessitating a dispatch of relief forces, one involving a parachute drop of 75 commandos carried out under intense fire.  Together with a Spanish overland force that set out from Sidi Ifni, the Tiluin defenders and other civilians were rescued and transported to the capital.