The Green March
350,000 Moroccans walked into the Spanish Sahara carrying Qurans and flags. No weapons. Just feet.
The king asked for volunteers. He got 350,000.
By 1975, Spain was dying — Franco was on his deathbed, the empire was finished, and the Spanish Sahara was an expensive embarrassment. Morocco wanted it. So did Mauritania. So did the Polisario Front, a Sahrawi independence movement backed by Algeria. Everyone expected war.
Hassan II had another idea.
On October 16, 1975, he announced the Green March — a peaceful mass walk into the Spanish Sahara to assert Moroccan sovereignty. He called for 350,000 volunteers: men, women, elderly, young. They would carry Moroccan flags and Qurans. No weapons. No army. Just citizens, walking.
The response was overwhelming. Moroccans from every region volunteered. The government organized transport, supplies, tent cities at the border. By early November, a human wave was assembled in the desert near Tarfaya, waiting for the signal.
Spain panicked. You can shoot an army. You can't shoot 350,000 unarmed civilians carrying holy books without becoming an international pariah. Franco was dying (he would be dead within weeks). The Spanish military wanted to fight, but the government in Madrid knew it was over.
On November 6, 1975, the march began. The volunteers walked south across the border into the Spanish Sahara, singing and praying. They advanced about ten kilometers before Hassan II, having made his point, ordered them to stop and return. The Spanish agreed to negotiate.
Within months, Spain withdrew. Morocco and Mauritania divided the territory. The Polisario, backed by Algeria, launched a guerrilla war that continues, in frozen form, today. The Western Sahara remains disputed — a "non-self-governing territory" in UN language, Moroccan in Moroccan maps, occupied in Polisario claims.
The Green March is celebrated every November 6 in Morocco — a national holiday commemorating the day citizens walked into the desert and won a territory without firing a shot. Whether it was liberation or occupation depends on who you ask.
But the image remains: 350,000 people, walking into the unknown, armed with faith and flags and feet.
The Facts
- •The Green March began November 6, 1975
- •350,000 Moroccan civilians participated
- •Francisco Franco died November 20, 1975
- •Spain formally withdrew February 26, 1976
- •Mauritania renounced its claim in 1979
- •The Western Sahara conflict remains unresolved
- •Morocco controls approximately 80% of the territory
- •November 6 is a national holiday in Morocco
Sources
- Hodges, Tony. 'Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War.' Lawrence Hill
- Shelley, Toby. 'Endgame in the Western Sahara.' Zed Books
- UN documentation on Western Sahara
