Introduction

“¡Hay moros en la costa!” [There are Moors on the coast!] This familiar Spanish idiomatic expression is used to prompt silence from whoever is speaking due to the impending arrival of another person. The announcement signals a fear of being overheard and situates the newcomer in the role of one deliberately excluded. The expression is derogatory toward Africans in at least two respects. First, it employs a racial and religious term with negative connotations to denote someone with whom information should not be shared. As Daniela Flesler notes in The Return of the Moor, the term Moors is used in Spain “to signify any Arab or Muslim,” and it associates them with the conquering of the Iberian Peninsula by Muslim forces from Africa in the eighth century (3). This nomenclature lumps together culturally distinct groups and links all of them to notions of invasion and attack. The second problem with the expression is the idea that such people should be barred from conversations due to their perceived untrustworthiness or outsider status. The phrase places the “Moor” on the coast, or the geographical margins of the country, and thus relegates a large group of people to the periphery of national dialogue. Such marginalization of Africa, via the denigration of Arabs and Muslims from the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, is explicit within this well-known Spanish phrase, and it symbolizes Africa’s deliberate exclusion from the centuries-long conversation about Spanish identity.