Interwoven Histories: Spain and North Africa

Spain and North Africa are closer than many next‑door neighbors: at one point, you could stand on a Moroccan beach and see the edge of a Muslim-ruled Europe across the water. For this episode, we’re stepping onto both shores at once and following the stories that crossed between them.

Four thousand Arabic-derived words in Spanish hide in plain sight, from ‘ojalá’ whispered as a wish to ‘almohada’ waiting on your bed. This episode zooms in on that kind of quiet survival: not armies or treaties, but habits, tools, and tastes that slipped past dates in textbooks.

We’ll trace how irrigation systems first laid out for Andalusi orchards still shape Iberian landscapes, and how recipes built on rice, citrus, and saffron migrated from palace kitchens to everyday stews. We’ll see scholars in Córdoba translating texts that later powered European science, and families in both Cádiz and Tangier telling parallel stories about the sea.