Morocco vs Spain: A contest of blurred loyalties for some football fans

In this file photo, fans react during the World Cup group F football match between Belgium and Morocco in Doha, Qatar on Sunday, November 27, 2022.

Sulaika Hosain, a 26-year-old Ceuta native, feels "100 percent Spanish", yet when the game kicks off in Qatar, her sympathies will tilt toward Morocco, the land of her grandfather. Its mixed population of Christians and Muslims, Spanish and Moroccan residents and day workers, live in relative harmony behind a border fence that many desperate migrants from across Africa see as their last barrier to a better life.However, the city of 85,000 recently became the flashpoint of the biggest diplomatic crisis in recent memory between Madrid and Rabat.

That, combined with a border closed by Morocco for two years to control the pandemic, damaged the economy on both sides of the frontier. Tensions were only calmed and the border reopened after Spain’s prime minister met with Moroccan King Mohammed VI in April.But for many people like Hosain, who live or work in Ceuta, the game won’t tear them in two.

Regardless of the result, he does not expect the game to lead to any serious problems like the riots in Belgium and the Netherlands after Morocco beat Belgium in the group phase."Morocco is playing well, but when they meet Spain they will hit a wall," he joked. "And then the game is over. That is it."

“There are people from the peninsula who when you say you are from Ceuta, you have to show them where it is, and they say ‘that is Africa’.”

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