ABSTRACT
As African migrants have become a more visible presence in Spanish society, African–Spanish couples are portrayed with more frequency in literature, film, and television programs; they are also the subject of political commentary and media controversy. Much of these representations continue to portray Africans as a fetishized, exotic “Other,” or a perpetual “token” character, as Isabel Santaolalla has demonstrated occurs in pop culture (62, 64). Representing immigrants in stereotypical ways continues to fix them as outside of the national and cultural norm, and further serves to reinforce notions of ethnic and racial homogeneity, in essence refusing to fully come to terms with the changing demographics of Spanish society. Mixed marriages are on the rise: in 2010, the Spanish Statistical Office, in an analysis of the municipal registries throughout Spain (el padrón municipal), reported 6,566,640 foreign-born residents: almost 14 percent of the population (Mullor 25). According to the same study, out of all the immigrants registered, 754,114 were Moroccan, and 237,309 from various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In just a decade, the number of mixed marriages in Spain more than doubled to 10.4 percent of all marriages documented in 2005, and African–Spanish couples represented 23.2 percent of those (Morán). 1
