This chapter surveys the colonial discourses that emerged in occupied Tetouan, some of which established the seeds of the tropes and the narratives which consolidated throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and the Spanish Protectorate of northern Morocco (1912–56). I look at the religiously-inflected discourses informed by trans-imperial notions and practices, I scrutinise the specificities of the Hispano-Moroccan “contact zone,” and I signal the coexistence of two types of historical conceptions—one governed by a teleological, linear, and progress-led modern historical thinking; and the other one based on what I call the “circularity of history,” according to which the Hispano-Moroccan colonial encounter was an encounter between peoples who shared a long history and geographical proximity. I specifically look into the latter, I chart the multifarious ramifications within it, and I argue that the epistemology of the circularity of history was well rooted in the local realm, and more particularly in Tetouani society, culture, and politics—which is why it came to engender the colonial discourse par excellence thereafter. Ultimately, I posit that the reference to the centuries-old relations across the Strait of Gibraltar shall neither serve to romanticise Spanish colonialism nor to obscure the meanings with which it was endowed in northern Moroccan society, culture, and politics.