The Spanish war on Tetouan (1859-60) and the subsequent occupation of the northern Moroccan city by the Spanish army (1860-62) have widely been considered to have constituted landmarks in the end of Morocco’s independence. In this paper this interpretation will not be completely neglected, for Spain achieved to consolidate its influence in the Sharifian Empire along the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the favorable conditions established in the several treaties that followed the peacemaking. However, such thesis –which reifies the power of “the colonizers” and undermines that of “the colonized”- will be nuanced by accounting for the many anxieties and obstacles that permeated in the Spanish discursive and material colonization, on the one hand, and by complying with the means by which Moroccans limited such colonization, on the other. I will show that the Spanish authorities, through both material and symbolic associations, intended to depict the occupation of Tetouan as a recreation of Reconquista. As inferred from Ahmed ibn Khalid al-Nasiri’s work -informed by oral testimonies of the war and the occupation- it is likely that part of the Tetouani population, amongst whom there were many of the descendants of expulsed Morisco and Sephardic Jews, did perceive the defeat and the seizure of Tetouan as a repetition of Reconquista. However, I will argue that such Spanish acts and representations shall be understood not as the sign of Spanish colonial power, but rather as the requisite by which colonial power was asserted and constructed. Consequently, I will hold that recreating Reconquista was one major tool by which Spanish colonial power –neither real not evident- was to be performed. Key to this understanding are the limits that Spain faced in both the European and the Moroccan realms. While Great Britain was an essential actor in constraining Spain’s advancement in the Sharifian Empire, I will mostly concentrate in the way in which Moroccan politics as well as the makhzenian diplomacy restrained Spain’s colonial ambitions, in general, and the conditions to the peace treaty which included the incorporation of Tetouan to the Spanish monarchy, in particular. These diplomatic strategies sometimes built upon as well as reinforced Europeans’ prejudices that historiographical (post)colonial narratives have often reproduced -amongst the most widespread tropes, that precolonial Morocco was immersed in an uncontrolled ‘anarchy’, and that Moroccans were characterized by ‘savagery’ and extreme religious ‘fanaticism’.