Abstract
Between 1931 and 1936 the democratic Spanish government overthrew the monarchy and established the Second Spanish Republic. It was a volatile period for Spanish-Moroccan relations. Fascists were in favor of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco, whereas Republicans were typically against it. Aurora Bertrana (1892–1974) was a Republican Catalan writer who moved to Morocco in 1935 to write about Muslim women living under the Spanish Protectorate. A close examination of her novel El Marroc sensual i fanàtic (1935) reveals an anticolonialism based on her preoccupation with Spanish nationalist dignity rather than with Moroccan independence. Instead of concluding that Spain’s colonization of Morocco is not good, Bertrana concludes that it is not good enough. Her writing perpetuates centuries-old Spanish Orientalist stereotypes, thus complicating the glorified history of Spanish Republican anticolonialism and feminism in the 1930s.
