Massacre of Saïda (1881)

The Franco-Algerian Company hired day labourers across the impoverished Spanish South-East to work in the esparto harvest in Algeria offering passage and travel to their families,^[1] although eventually day labourers were forced to pay for their travel and to buy their food at the company's store.^[2]

Following the outbreak of a rebellion in Tunisia, the instability moved to Algeria in late April 1881, with Bou-Amama taking the lead of the movement against the French occupation.^[3] Then, on 11 June 1881, following the seizure of Khalfallah by insurgents, around 190 Spanish esparto harvesters (most of them from Almería, and the rest from Murcia and Alicante)^[2] were put to the sword in Khalfallah, in the surroundings of Saïda (to the south of Oran),^[4] whereas many of their wives were raped, while the attackers also made 600 hostages and set 100,000 quintals of esparto on fire.^[5]

News about the event arrived in Oran (17 June) and then in Spain (18 June).^[6][7][2] For the rest of June and July many naked and hungry Spaniards moved to Oran to get a passage back to Almería.^[8][2] About 10,000 immigrants were repatriated to Spain.^[7]

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Moisand, Jeanne (2015). "Migrant-e-s entre deux empires. Journaliers agricoles espagnols à Cuba et en Algérie dans les années 1880-1890". Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle. 51 (51): 89–106. doi:10.4000/rh19.4925.
• Montes Bernárdez, Ricardo (2011). "La matanza de almerienses, murcianos y alicantinos en Khalfalah (Saida, Argelia), en 1881" (PDF). Murgetana (124). Murcia: Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio: 119–132. ISSN 0213-0939.
• Pérez Artés, María del Carmen (2016). "El éxodo almeriense: entendiendo la emigración española finisecular" (PDF). Documentos de Trabajo. Asociación Española de Historia Económica. ISSN 2174-4912. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-09-21. Retrieved 2021-04-24.
• Vilar Ramírez, Juan Bautista (1983). "Quelques conséquences en Espagne du soulèvement Algérien de 1881 (dans les courants migratoires hispano-algériens et dans relations hispano-françaises)" (PDF). Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez. 19. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez: 275–291. doi:10.3406/casa.1983.2396. ISSN 2173-1306.^{[permanent dead link]}