It has been a hundred years since the Battle of Annual, the most infamous conflict of the Rif War, took place in northern Morocco and arguably became a national tragedy on a greater scale than any other military defeat suffered by Spain in modern history, including the Spanish-American war of 1898. In July 1921, an alliance of Berber tribes assembled by Muhamed Abd el-Krim Khattabi to resist Spain's colonial incursions in the Rif region launched an offensive against the Spanish military outposts west of Melilla, and as a result of strategic miscalculations by Spanish military commanders, some of whom abandoned their troops or committed suicide, between 10,000 and 15,000 Spanish soldiers were killed by Abdel Krim's forces in less than two weeks. In the short run, the so-called Disaster of Annual led to a political, social, and cultural crisis that ultimately resulted in the Spanish Civil War. In the long run, this historical moment of colonial conflict has profoundly shaped contemporary Spanish cultural attitudes towards North Africans, and towards Muslims in general.

I have written this book out of the firm conviction that the weighty influence of the colonial past on the multicultural European present needs to be grappled with and in the hope that this process will continue to move forward beyond the limits of the academy. I am well aware that by focusing on Spanish portrayals of Moroccan Muslims and Jews I am not directly featuring the historical voices that most need to be heard, those of colonised Moroccans, and I wish that I had the linguistic skills to have done so. However, I have endeavoured to draw out these voices from between the lines of the texts and in the spaces of the photographs I examine in this book. Likewise, my central question, which is how Spanish narratives of national identity are shaped by Spain's relationship with Muslim and Jewish cultures in the context of the Rif War, takes on new importance in twenty-first century Spain, as a generation of Spaniards of Moroccan ancestry is coming of age and reshaping cultural identities in the Iberian Peninsula. I eagerly anticipate hearing their voices in scholarship and society in the years to come.