De presidios a heterotopías fronterizas: análisis de la transformación histórico-política de Ceuta y Melilla

Abstract

On the northern coast of the Moroccan coast two small cities, Ceuta and Melilla, are offered as anachronistic vestiges of the Spanish colonial empire. The two enclaves, transfigured and shaped by the signs that colonial history has sewn on them, have seen their status transformed from simple bases of war and opening to trade in the Mediterranean, to European borders in charge of filtering the migratory traffic coming mainly from sub-Saharan Africa. How and why, through the convulsive history of the enclaves, has it been possible to carry out this conversion? The present research article addresses this question, tracing and unraveling –through an intense historical-political study– the circumstances that have allowed and encouraged the transformation of Ceuta and Melilla into border heterotopies located at the most remote edge of Europe.