6 November 1975: the Green March

At Hassan II’s call, hundreds of thousands of Moroccans walked peacefully into the Sahara. The date is still a national meeting.

A people making visible a bond claimed long before colonisation.

On 6 November 1975, King Hassan II launched the Green March. About 350,000 Moroccans crossed, Qur’an in hand, into the Sahara then administered by Spain. The gesture was meant to be massive and peaceful.

On 14 November 1975, the Madrid Accords arranged the Spanish withdrawal. Spain left the territory in the months that followed. For Moroccans, the march is not a textbook page. It is the day a people made visible a bond claimed long before colonisation.

The Kingdom traces that bond to the allegiance of Saharan tribes to the sultans. The International Court of Justice, in its advisory opinion of 16 October 1975, recognised legal ties of allegiance between the Sultan and some tribes, and also recalled self-determination. Morocco read those ties as the historical foundation of its sovereignty. The Green March was its political answer.

Fifty years on, 6 November is still that memory’s date. Resolutions change. The gesture explains why, seen from the Kingdom, the file is not a foreign question.

Source note. Green March, 6 November 1975; Madrid Accords, 14 November 1975; ICJ advisory opinion, 16 October 1975.