Day 211
4 hrs, 13 .8 kms

The idyllic emerald hills and wild shore abruptly comes to an end and the beginning of the Ksar Sghir projects begin--one of Morocco's most ambitious development projects in recent years. It starts out with a couple of small fishing ports built out into the sea. But it's just the beginning. The "real" port--now Africa's largest, is farther up ahead, a massive, very modern commercial port being built out into the sea right at the base of steep mountains.

I stopped by Ksar Sghir back in 2009 on my town hopping tour through this region and wasn't very impressed by the town--just a row of eateries an the side of a hill overlooking a small stream flowing into the sea. On the other side are the ruins of a little castle surrounded by a fence that hardly looks worth exploring.

But today, I'm going to explore a bit more. This is going to be my stopping point for the day, as it's my last chance for finding reliable transportation until Fnideq . Since it's still early and I have a lot of time to kill, I figure I might as well go check out that castle. After a enjoy one of my favorite Moroccan specialties: a big dish of cow head.

Across the river, there's a cluster of scrappy houses, then a street, a plaza and a city hall being built. Clearly an attempt to turn Ksar Sghir into a "real" town rather than just a place Tangerians go to eat a meal and get out of the city.

Then there's the entrance to the castle complex, where I find a guard, fast asleep. Clearly there aren't a whole lot of people interested in visiting Ksar Sghir's castle. I wake him up, gladly pay the 10 dirham (1 euro) entrance fee. I balk a bit when he insists that I need a "guide"... but when the scrawny old guide shows up I feel sorry for the guy, realizing that I'm probably the only customer he's had all week... Oh, why not. One guided tour isn't going to kill me.

The castle, although not all that impressive visually, is actually a site of great importance . Originally used by the Phoenicians, later the Romans, this was one of the launching off points of the Arab invasion into Spain. Later, in an odd twist in history, the Muslim Andalus kingdom tried to invade the Muslim Idrisid kingdom in Morocco.

Over the centuries, this continued to be a point of conflict. The Portuguese captured this spot and rebuit the castle and mini-city here, giving it a Portugues flair. When they left, they dumped sand and debris in the harbour, making it unusable for a long time. As a result Ksar Sghir lost its place as an important port... until today, with the largest port in Africa being built right next to it.

Then Moriscos

Later on, doing a bit more research online, wikipedia mentions that this was also a place where the Moriscos landed when they were driven out of Spain in the early 1600s. I'm a bit puzzled, as I thought that the Muslims and Jews had been driven out of Spain long before that. So I googled "Moriscos", and learned something I didn't know about Spanish/Moorish history .

See, when Spain decided to drive out all the non-Christians from their country, many Muslims opted to convert to Christianity rather than be exiled from their homes. These people were called "Moriscos". They were the tradesmen and working class--playing an important part of the Spanish economy.

Then, some 150 years later, a Spanish king decided that these people were not "real" Christians and should be driven out. Some historians feel that this was just an excuse to plunder their lands and their goods, as Spain was having financial difficulty at that time. So, in a swift move, they were loaded onto ships only allowed to take what they could carry in their hands, and sent down to Ksar Sghir and other locations, to a land that was completely foreign to them.

According to some sources, the locals did not receive these refugees well, seeing them as competitors for land and resources. Eventually the Moriscos did get settled in here in northern Morocco ... re-converted to Islam and... well live here to this day. And many of them have all the physical traits of Spaniards, as they are in fact descendants of Iberians, not of Middle Eastern Arabs. This was not so much an "ethnic cleansing" that took place, rather they were targeted simply because they were an easy scapegoat for an over-zealous Christian Europe attempting to erase any traces of Islam in the continent.

To this day, there is a somewhat chilly relation with the Northern Moroccans and Central Moroccans, and I wonder if the reception they got 4 hundred years ago might have something to do with it.

I get to talking with a couple of of Moroccan fellows in Fnideq a the next day about this. They all look like Spainiards, speak Spanish, have visited or worked in Spain--and love Spanish rumbas and flamenco.

"We know about all the injustices that were done to us... But we don't feel any resentment towards Spain or anyone else . Those things happened--but that's in the past. We want to focus on the present."

If only everyone in the world had that attitude.

Just over the last couple of years things have improved significantly on both sides of the Straits in this matter. On the Spanish side, they've finally acknowledged the injustice committed to the Moriscos--even considered to offer citizenship to their descendants (this proposal was dropped because it'd be to difficult to determine who is a Morisco and who isn't). On the Moroccan side, the country has invested heavily in this region--which had been previously largely ignored--turning it into a hotspot for tourism, commerce and industry.

But I still have to wonder if the concept of "homeland" and "national identity" for people in this region is still strongly affected by events that took place 400 years ago.