ish.
Spanish is spoken by a very small population in the north of the country especially around the Spanish exclaves Melilla and Ceuta. While French language dominance in Morocco is a direct result of the French occupation, the Spanish occupation of large parts of Morocco for about half a century didn't result in any strong Spanish language presence. Spanish today is almost invisible in the mainstream media and in the educational system.
According to the 2004 census, 2.19 million Moroccans spoke a foreign language other than French.English, while far behind French in terms of number of speakers, is the first foreign language of choice, since French is obligatory, among educated youth and professionals. As a result of national education reforms entering into force in late 2002, English is taught in most public schools from the fourth grade on. French is still taught nationally from the earliest grades.
Below is the number of speakers of each Berber language, according to the 2004 census:
There are about 2 million Moroccan Berber-speakers living in Europe. They represent about 80% of all Moroccans in the Netherlands, about 70% of Moroccans in Belgium, about 50% of Moroccans in France, Germany, and Spain, and about 25% of all Moroccans in Italy.
Linguistically, Berber belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family, and has many accents and dialects. Berber is known by Arabic-speaking Moroccans as "Shelha", "Rifiya", or "Susiya". Classical Arabic of the Middle East had used the word "al-Barbariyya" (The equivalent of "Berber" in English) since the first contacts between Berbers and Arabs 14 centuries ago. Although, there is a dominating trend, that occurred in the first decade of the 21st century, among all Arabic-speaking media in both the Middle East and North Africa of using the word "al-Amazighiyya" to refer to the Berber language and "al-Amazigh" to refer to the Berbers, as the Arabic word "Barbari" means both "Berber" and "Barbaric"/"uncivilized". The strong campaigns and discourses of Berber cultural activists who master Arabic have managed to influenece Arab media and Arab intellectuals as far as the Persian Gulf. Berber activists and intellectuals have succeeded in promoting their own cultural terminology, their own symbols like the Berber flag, and their own identity keywords on a large scale in Arab and European media. This made the Berber language and Berber culture go from unnoticed to unavoidable.
Recent studies make clear no significant genetic differences exist between Arabic and non-Arabic speaking populations, HLA DNA data suggest that most Moroccans are of a Berber origin and that Arabs who invaded North Africa and Spain in the 7th century did not substantially contribute to the gene pool. The Moorish refugees from Spain settled in the coast-towns. According to a 2000 article in European Journal of Human Genetics, Moroccans from North-Western Africa were genetically closer to Iberians than to West Africans and Middle Easterners but were still genetically distinct from Iberians and Europeans.
The different loci studied revealed close similarity between the Berbers and other north African groups, mainly with Moroccan Arabic-speakers, which is in accord with the hypothesis that the current Moroccan population has a strong Berber background.
Morocco is a de jure constitutional parliamentary monarchy with an elected parliament. With the 2011 constitutional reforms, the King of Morocco still retains few executive powers whereas those of the prime minister have been enlarged. Opposition political parties are legal. Politics of Morocco take place in a framework of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Morocco is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Assembly of Representatives of Morocco and the Assembly of Councillors. The Moroccan Constitution provides for a monarchy with a Parliament and an independent judiciary.
The constitution 