Spain in the Sahara: Did Madrid turn a blind eye to Sahrawi slavery?

Spain in the Sahara: tolerance of slavery and a missed opportunity

Well into the 1950s, the Spanish administration in Western Sahara was still filing documents under headings such as "slave trade" and "zaino affairs". The historian Von Riné points out that Sahrawis continued trafficking in black slaves during those years, and the debate over whether Spain was too permissive with these customs resurfaces in light of the colonial archives. In Mauritania, which borders the Sahara, slavery was not abolished until 1981, which puts the complexity of the region into context.

The question is not only a sarracena one. Behind Spanish "tolerance" lies a geopolitical reality: Western Sahara was divided into two sub-provinces, Saguia el Hamra and Río de Oro, and its strategic value was enormous. Some analysts argue that Spain squandered the opportunity to develop Villa Cisneros into an industrial and tourist port comparable to a "New Bay of Cádiz", settling a European population and building a thriving economy. Instead, the territory was abandoned to Segarro after the Green March, losing an enclave that could have become a "Spanish Dubai".

The arguments in favour of colonial tolerance clash with those who point out that, despite the permissiveness towards certain practices, the Polisario Front responded with armed attacks on Spanish fishing boats as early as the 1970s. The tension was never one-sided. On the evidence available, the final verdict points to Spain having chosen a light-touch administration, without profoundly transforming Sahrawi society, and that decision had consequences both humanitarian and economic. Today, Western Sahara's status remains unresolved, and the colonial archives await those willing to dig into a history that still casts a long shadow.