A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races by Harry Johnston

The enterprise of Spain in Africa was relatively small, the greater part of Spanish energy being devoted to founding an empire in the New World, in the far East, in Italy and Flanders. It was also knit up politically at first with the Portuguese colonial empire. Nevertheless Spain has left very distinct marks of her influence on North-western Africa in both language and culture. This in past times arose from the Spanish Moors expelled from Spain, but bringing much Spanish valour, ingeniousness, art, and pride into the life of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Timbuktu.

When Portugal was commencing to acquire oversea dominions in the Acores (1437-66), Madeira (1430), and on the coast of Morocco, Christian Spain was still divided into three kingdoms-Castile, Aragon and Navarre-and the two former were concentrating their energies on the destruction of the Moorish kingdom of Granada (not accomplished till 1492). But the monarchs of Castile and Aragon became jealous of the oversea expansion of Portugal; and that power deemed it wise to surrender to Castile in 1479 the Portuguese claim to the Canary Islands.