Abstract
The year before Spain invaded Morocco with forty-five thousand men, an incident occurred that threatened to undermine the already tense relations between Spanish authorities and the Moroccan sultan. According to the consul general in Tangier Juan Blanco del Valle (1822–77), a Muslim woman and her two daughters had been preparing to flee the country because, having been educated as Christians, they wanted to “embrace Catholicism.” Caught in the company of a “renegade” Spanish soldier, the three were imprisoned. Blanco del Valle wrote an impassioned letter describing the scene to the secretary of state in Madrid, claiming that the women