This paper proposes a revision of the chronological, geographic, and discursive boundaries of Moroccan colonial history. I contend that Moroccan colonial history has largely been narrated from the perspective of French colonialism and the diverse reactions that it elicited among Moroccans living in the French zone. Rather than treating Spanish colonialism in Morocco as an appendix to the history of French colonialism, my paper asks: what new insights come into focus if we flip the perspective of modern Moroccan history by re-telling it through the lens of Spanish colonialism and the Moroccan subjects who lived through it? I hope to illuminate the differences between the Spanish colonial project and the French colonial project, and then to show how these differences can change our understanding of when the colonial period begins and ends, where it takes place, and what it means. Conventional accounts of colonial Moroccan history take the “colonial period” to be coterminous with the Protectorate period (1912-1956). Nevertheless, for Spanish historians and for Moroccan historians from the former Spanish zone, the colonial period starts in 1859-1860, with the Spanish-Moroccan War. In turn, nineteenth-century Spanish and Moroccan texts represent the Spanish-Moroccan War as an extension of the medieval Christian Reconquest of al-Andalus. I will therefore ask what it means to cast the Protectorate period as part of a longer colonial history, which dates back to 1859 and evokes long-standing interactions between Morocco and Iberia. Spanish writers and scientists promoted the idea that Spain’s “natural” southern border was not the Strait of Gibraltar but rather the Atlas mountains. While French colonial intellectuals famously tried to distinguish between Moroccan Arabs and Berbers, the Spanish posited a different distinction: between Spanish Moroccans, who descend from al-Andalus, and African Moroccans. Indeed, the idea of “resurrecting” al-Andalus in Morocco formed the basis of Spain’s cultural policies in Morocco. After the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco founded several colonial institutions that fomented the academic study of al-Andalus and codified the elements of Morocco’s “Andalusi” culture. Today, Morocco’s Andalusi identity and the cultural practices associated with it (such as Andalusi music) are essential components of Moroccan national identity. My paper will therefore conclude by showing how Spanish colonial discourses about Morocco’s connection to al-Andalus inadvertently sowed the seeds of the Moroccan national culture that supplanted colonial rule and that continues to define Morocco today.