Chapter 467: Splitting Morocco

As time came to 1908, the various strategic plans formulated by Spain many years ago gradually ushered in the harvest.

The first was the localization work of the Morocco colony, which had been completed by more than half so far; it could be said that the Morocco colony had initially undergone localization.

In order to promote the localization of the Morocco colony, Spain had been continuously transporting a large number of immigrants to Morocco for so many years.

According to the statistics of the Spanish government, since Morocco became a Spanish colony, Spain had cumulatively transported over 1.6 million immigrants to Morocco, and transported nearly 3 million Moroccans to the Spanish mainland or other colonies.

This also led to the current population of the Morocco region plummeting to less than 3 million, among which the proportion of Spaniards was close to 60%, the proportion of other European populations was also about 15%, and only 25% were the original inhabitants of the Morocco region.

In such a situation, the Morocco colony basically would not escape Spain's control. Most of the population living here were Spaniards; Morocco was naturally Spain's territory since ancient times, and no one could change this fact.

In January 1908, the Spanish government formally announced to the outside world that the Morocco colony was formally dissolved and reorganized into four state-level administrative regions: Melilla State, Serra State, Meknes State, and Souira State, which were affiliated with the Spanish region under the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal.

Although this order involved the administrative division changes of tens of thousands of square kilometers of land, it did not cause any fluctuations within Spain.

The reason was also simple: Spain's localization work for Morocco had already been carried out, and Spaniards had long known that this piece of African land across the Strait of Gibraltar would be merged into the Spanish mainland in the future.

Some European Great Powers were quite surprised by Spain's progress in localizing Morocco, and they also did not expect that Spain's progress in localizing Morocco would be so fast.

Those who paid relatively close attention to Morocco's situation, like Britain and France, were relatively clear about Spain's methods for localization work. In fact, to put it plainly, it was just one point: reducing the Moroccan population and increasing the Spanish population.

After Spain conquered Morocco, it did not conduct cruel massacres in Morocco, but only relatively gently transported these Moroccans out of the Morocco region.

Spain even gave these Moroccans a certain amount of compensation; as long as they were willing to go to Spain's other colonies, these Moroccans could obtain large pieces of land in Spain's other colonies.

Of course, for those Moroccans who were willing to join Spanish nationality and go to the Spanish mainland, Spain was also not exclusive.

Among those millions of people in Morocco, nearly 1.5 million joined Spanish nationality after passing various immigration policy reviews, and these people also gradually evolved into Spaniards in Spain's national integration policy.

In order to prevent these Moroccans from gathering together in the Spanish mainland and forming a Moroccan nation independent of the Spanish national system, Spain had conducted relatively detailed splitting of these Moroccans.

Basically, the number of Moroccan immigrants obtained by each state would not be too many; these Moroccans would eventually be split up and arranged in various states, and they were surrounded by Spaniards, so naturally, they could not form the Moroccan national concept.

Under long-term assimilation, these Moroccans spoke Spanish, ate Spanish food, celebrated Spanish festivals, accepted Spanish culture, and naturally were no different from true Spaniards.

As for Morocco, whether it was the Morocco region or the Moroccan nation, it had long been subjected to various changes and splits by Spain; Moroccans could not return to the past anyway.

After reorganizing the Morocco region into four state-level administrative regions, the number of parliamentary seats in various states within Spain also needed to be fine-tuned.

The 298 parliamentary seats possessed by the Spanish region remained unchanged; the parliamentary seats possessed by these 4 new state-level administrative regions were equivalent to being snatched from the hands of other state-level administrative regions in Spain.

Of course, because the entire Morocco region only had a population of just over 3 million, although the parliamentary seats of various states in Spain had decreased, the overall change was still not large.

According to government data, as of the beginning of 1908, Spain possessed a total population of 42.41 million, and the population proportion possessed by the four new state-level administrative regions was only about 7.6%, which converted to 22 parliamentary seats.

Spain's parliamentary seats in the House of Representatives were allocated according to the proportion of the population of each state; state-level administrative regions with relatively large populations did not care about these few seats, and state-level administrative regions with relatively small populations did not have many seats themselves, and the seats they lost because of the new state-level administrative regions could also likely be counted on one hand.

Speaking of population, Spain had already fully compensated for its disadvantage in terms of population.

Spain's population totaled 42.41 million, Portugal's population was 5.61 million, and the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal had a total population of 48.02 million, which could already rank fourth among the Great Powers, already surpassing the populations of Britain and France.

If the war broke out in three years, by then the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal would possess a population of over 50 million, and could at least mobilize an army of over 5 million, which was completely enough to cope with a world war.

After all, Spain still had a large number of colonial troops; just the troops armed by the indigenous people in the African and Philippine colonies could also scrape together a scale of several million people.

In this way, Spain could mobilize an army of up to ten million in World War I; any Great Power country would not be able to withstand such an army scale, and the only ones that could cope would be a super army power like Germany and a populous country like Russia.

Such an army scale was Gao Da's confidence in coping with World War I, and it was also Gao Da's trump card for planning a super war completely different from history.

Adding the airplanes and tanks Spain was researching, Gao Da had reason to believe that even if the current Spanish army faced unimaginable enemies, Spain still had full hope of victory.

Back to the change in administrative divisions in the Morocco region.

Actually, to a certain extent, Morocco's reorganization into 4 state-level administrative regions and joining the Spanish mainland had a certain impact on Portugal.

Originally, Portugal's influence in the United Kingdom of Spain and Portugal was very low; it could be said that it was in a state of being half-annexed by Spain.

After Morocco's land joined the Spanish mainland, Portugal's say in the United Kingdom became even lower, and it could even be said to be negligible.

Portugal's land area was only 92,200 square kilometers, while the land of Spain and Morocco added together reached as high as 965,000 square kilometers. Portugal's land area was only about 9.5% of the Spanish mainland, not even one-tenth.

In terms of population, Portugal's 5.61 million population was only 13.23% of Spain's 42.41 million population; removing the large number of Spanish immigrants in Portugal, in reality, it was also about just over one-tenth.

Although they were part of the same United Kingdom, because the gap in territorial scale and population between the two sides was too disparate, Portugal's future in the United Kingdom was confused, and it could be annexed by Spain at any time.

The current Portuguese government was not unaware of this point, but they had no way to deal with it.

After all, it was quite reasonable for the Spanish government to incorporate Morocco's land into its own mainland; this was originally Spain's colony, and most of the population living in the colony were also Spaniards, and it had nothing to do with Portugal.

Since they had no way to deal with the changes in the domestic situation of the United Kingdom, they could only sit and watch Portugal's power in the United Kingdom become weaker and weaker. ===== CHAPTER 468 =====