Our Lady of Tetuan

Tetuan, northern Morocco, in the heart of the old Spanish Protectorate

Tetuan is a city that keeps on its stones the memory of two worlds: that of the Andalusians who fled Spain and that of the Spaniards who returned centuries later in another form. In this city of intertwined history, the Church of Our Lady of Victories retains the devotion that the Spanish settlers and missionaries introduced during the Protectorate. An advocation with a name of victory that today invites you to reflect on what it really means to overcome.

Tetuan, Andalusian city on Moroccan land

Tetuán is one of the most unique cities in North Africa because it has the print of two exiles in its urban fabric: that of the Moors and Jews expelled from Spain at the end of the 15th century, and that of the Spaniards themselves who came centuries later under the umbrella of the Protectorate. It is, in that sense, a double city, built by people who came from afar by bringing with it a culture that no longer fit in the place from which it came.

The Tetuán medina - declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997 - is one of the best preserved urban sets in northern Morocco. Its white alleys, its horseshoe arch doors, its houses with interior patios, its artisanal sockets: everything remembers the medieval Andalusian architecture moved to the other side of the Mediterranean. The Moors who founded the modern city of Tetuan in the 16th century - or rebuilt the previous one, which had been destroyed by the Portuguese - brought with them the constructive techniques, decorative patterns and artisan knowledge of Al-Ándalus. In Tetuan, the nostalgia of a lost land became stone and argamase.

The city also has an important musical tradition: Andalusian music - the muwashahat, the nubs - was preserved in Tetuan with a purity that its own Spanish heirs had lost. The Andalusian music groups of Tetuán are now internationally recognized as custodians of a musical heritage that Spain itself has had to rediscover through its southern neighbours of the Strait.

The Jewish community of Tetuan - the megorashim, the expelled - was for centuries one of the most active and influential of the Maghreb. Traders, translators, diplomats: the Jews of Tetuan served as intermediaries between the European and Moroccan world thanks to their knowledge of both languages and both cultures. His presence was drastically reduced throughout the 20th century, and today there are very few Jews left in the city, but his mark on the architecture of the Mellah, on the surnames of some families and on collective memory is still visible.

Spain and Tetuan: History of a Christian Presence

The relationship between Spain and Tetuan is not that of conqueror and conquered, although it was at some times: it is a more complex relationship, made of wars, exchanges, mutual influences and a geographical and cultural proximity that no political conflict has been able to completely erase.

La primera ocupación española de Tetuán fue consecuencia de la llamada Guerra de África o Guerra de Tetuán (1859-1860), el conflicto entre España y el sultanato de Marruecos que el general O’Donnell presentó como una expedición de honor para vengar agravios a los españoles de Ceuta. El ejército español tomó Tetuán el 6 de febrero de 1860 tras una campaña que despertó en España un entusiasmo patriótico considerable —sus cronistas más célebres, como Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, la narraron con una prosa de exaltación romántica—, y la ocupó hasta 1862, cuando las condiciones del tratado de paz obligaron a su retirada.

During those two years of occupation, the Spanish military and civilians in Tetuan tried to leave their mark in the city: they built a church, established an administration, opened markets. It was a short and ultimately failed experiment, but it left in the Spanish collective memory - and in the Moroccan - a pose that the following decades did not erase.

The Spanish presence was consolidated with the Protectorate (1912-1956). Tetuán was the capital of the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, the seat of the high commissioner and of the entire colonial administration. In those four decades, the city changed deeply: a European neighborhood - the enranche - was built with eclectic buildings that mix the art deco with elements of the Spanish-Morisca architecture; schools, hospitals, roads were opened; the communications network that linked northern Morocco to Spain was installed. The Spanish population of Tetuán became very large during that period, at some times exceeding the Moroccan population of the Enranche.

The Church of Our Lady of Victories

The Church of Our Lady of the Victories in Tetuan was built during the Spanish Protectorate period to meet the spiritual needs of the Christian community of the city. It is one of the elements of the enranche - the European neighborhood built outside the historical medina - that reflects the Spanish print in the city. See the documentary sheet of the temple.

The title "Our Lady of the Victories" has been documented in the Catholic presence of Tetuan since the 19th century. The sources consulted do not allow the specific title of this church to be safely attributed to Lepanto or to a unique episode of the Reconquist. Its historical context was marked by conflicts and the subsequent colonial presence; today the advocation calls for a Christian reading focused on the victory of charity, reconciliation and peace.

The same name in Tetuan acquires a complex historical dimension: the church is in a city reconstructed and repopulated by Andalusian communities and in a country that regained its independence in 1956. Human victories have a limited duration; Marian devotion, if authentic, transcends conflicts and leads to charity, justice and encounter.

The Franciscans played an active role in Tetuan during the Protectorate, both in pastoral work and in teaching. His schools were attended by Moroccan Muslim students in addition to the children of Spanish families, and this educational opening was one of the most effective forms of the Church's presence in the northern Moroccan society.

Marian devotion in northern Morocco

Northern Morocco - the area of the former Spanish Protectorate, which includes Tetuan, Larache, Alcazarquivir, Xauen, Nador - has a particular relationship with Spanish Marian devotion. The cities of that region had known for four decades a dense and organized Christian presence, with their churches, their processions, their feasts of the liturgical calendar. Many Moroccans of the region remember, through their elders, those manifestations of the Christian faith that were part of the daily landscape of their childhood.

This memory has an ambivalent texture: there is in it nostalgia of a coexistence that was, with all its limitations, a real experience; and there is also the memory of the injustices, the discrimination and the humiliation inherent in any colonial situation. The Catholicism that the Spaniards practiced in Tetuan was not always the best ambassador of himself, contaminated as it was by the structures of colonial power. But the faith that encouraged many of those faithful was authentic, and the Marian devotion they expressed had a sincerity that the most attentive Moroccan observers of the time knew how to recognize.

Today, Marian devotion in northern Morocco has been left to the small Catholic community that persists in the region: some religious, a few resident Europeans, and the sub-Saharan migrants who have made northern Morocco a stage on their way to Europe. For all of them, the Virgin is the mother who accompanies the path, regardless of the historical circumstances in which the veneration was established.

The current Catholic community in Tetuan

After Morocco's independence in 1956, the vast majority of Spanish residents in Tetuan returned to Spain. The city, which for forty years had had a European physionomy, gradually but decisively regained its Moroccan character. The enranche, with its colonial-style buildings, was integrated into the urban fabric of the modern city; the churches emptied or went into reduced use.

The present Catholic community of Tetuan is very small. It consists mainly of priests and religious of missionary congregations, some European co-workers and workers of international organizations, and a limited number of sub-Saharan migrants. Masses are celebrated with modest assistance, but the community maintains its life of prayer and its vocation to serve the most vulnerable in the city.

The Church of Our Lady of Victories remains a silent witness of a complex history. Its presence in the urban landscape of Tetuan - along with mosques, minarets and dominating domes of the medina - is a way to remember that cities have long memory, and that in that memory they live together without erasing the different chapters of history.

Spiritual reflection on intertwined cultures

Tetuan is a city that teaches humility to those who can hear it. Its alleys keep the cry of the Moorish who came from Granada without knowing if they would return; its buildings of the enranche keep the memory of a colonial adventure that ended as all colonial adventures end. The city survived its occupants and remains itself, enriched and wounded by all who passed through it.

The Virgin of the Victories, venerated in that church built in the time of the Protectorate, is today a figure that has survived the historical circumstances that surrounded it. She is no longer the patron of any military victory or colonial project: she is simply the Mother of God present in a land where her children are few and where history has left scars in all communities.

The true victories, teaches the Christian faith, are not those of the armies but of charity: victory over hatred, over indifference, over the oblivion of those who suffered. The Catholic community of Tetuan, small and discreet, is in this sense a heiress of a tradition of presence that - with all its historical defects - also included authentic gestures of service, education and encounter. May the Virgin of the Victories intercede so that this part of the inheritance may be the one that prevails and that continues to bear fruit in the intertwined land of Tetuan.