Spanish women's travel narratives in Colonial Morocco, 1900-36: Reconsidering their imagined geographies

The intersections between literature, travel, and geography have shown us that travel narratives are descriptions not merely of geographical itineraries but of a complex topography ofalterity that was neither neutral nor innocent. At the same time, post-colonial and feminist revisions of the imperial period show that the relation between West and East was one of power based on a very androcentric positioning. After the loss of Spain's last colonies in 1898, Spanish foreign policy reoriented its overseas colonial strategies to focus on Morocco. In consequence, "interest " in this region increased dramatically, and many travellers wrote of their experiences there. Within the study period (1900-36) we have counted about 60 male travellers but only four women. For our discussion in this article we have chosen two of those women - Carmen de Burgos and Aurora Bertrana - because of their outstanding personalities and pioneering roles in the Spanish society. Their imagined geographies clearly illuminated Spanish travel writings from a gender perspective and question the notion of simple Othering, as presented in Said's Orientalism, in which the heterogeneity of colonial power is neglected. © 2008 by AWG Publishing, Toronto, Canada.