Morocco–Spain relations
Morocco and Spain maintain extensive diplomatic, commercial, and military ties. Morocco’s foreign policy has focused on Western partners, including neighboring Spain. They have, however, been historically intense and conflictive. History Precedents After crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in 711, Muslims from North Africa led by the Umayyad commander Tariq ibn Ziyad seized the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania in the wake of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. In the first generations after the conquest, the African Romance (argued to be part of a continuum with Ibero-Romance) presumably spoken by the Berber invaders may have facilitated communication with the native population, prior to the latter's arabization. Following the Abbasid takeover of the Umayyad caliphate, a branch of Umayyads established an independent Córdoba-centered Islamic polity in the Iberian Peninsula (initially an emirate and later a caliphate), which lasted until its demise in the early 11th century and ensuing replacement by ephemeral Islamic statelets. In the 10th century, Córdoba waged an expansionist policy to expand its clout in the Maghreb, vying a struggle against the Fatimid Empire. Under the Almoravid and the Almohad dynasties, both of which had Marrakesh as a capital, most of the Muslim-controlled territory in the Iberian Peninsula came