‘A top secret relationship’: Muslim–Christian courtships in Ceuta’s convivencia

Abstract

Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the North African Mediterranean coast, is a place of quotidian coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and smaller numbers of Hindus and Jews. The Ceutan government, in response to the dense heterogeneous population, extolled discourse of convivencia, which celebrates the diverse ethno-religious groups living peacefully together. Today, convivencia permeates all aspects of Ceutan political, social, and economic life. Within this pervasive discourse, interreligious couples are regarded as the epitome of convivencia, and yet, at a familial level, they remain frowned upon for crossing socio-religious and political boundaries. This article studies how through secrecy and tactical secret-sharing, Muslim–Christian couples successfully initiate, construct, and transform their intimacy into marriage or cohabitation. Based on extensive ethnographic research and interviews with Ceutan and Ceutan-peninsular interreligious couples, this article concludes that secret courtships provide mixed couples a space and time vital for negotiating their differences, while navigating the overarching socio-religious and political structures.

Carlos and Nayat met in their 20s when they were both employed as teachers in the same Ceutan high school. They formed part of a group of single teachers who started socialising regularly outside of school hours. Their attraction was immediate. The two started an intimate relationship, however with strong reservations. ‘A top-secret relationship!’ emphasised Carlos making air quotes, ‘it was top, top secret! Not even our friends or colleagues knew’. The couple felt that due to their ethno-religious differences, the stakes were extremely high. Nayat is from El Principe, an almost exclusively Muslim barrio at the Spanish-Moroccan border, while Carlos is from a more religiously diverse neighbourhood at the peripheries of Ceuta’s city centre. He was raised Roman Catholic and was even involved in the Ceutan confraternity (la cofradía) that carries the elaborate Passiontide statues during the annual Good Friday procession. It was therefore only through secrecy that Carlos and Nayat felt they could entertain the idea of courting in the small Spanish enclave.

‘From the beginning, we always had to have everything very clear!’ stressed Carlos; ‘topics like marriage and kids would have normally emerged at a later stage in a relationship, but we had to prepare’. Although during the first months of their secret courtship, Nayat and Carlos wished to set aside serious discussions relating to their religious differences; they had to prepare for the expected objections and unavoidable questions the revelation of their relationship would inevitably stir. ‘Why are we together?’ Carlos asked me rhetorically. By that point, he and Nayat had been together for more than a decade and married with two sons. ‘Because we coincided; at work, going out together, meeting in places that are known to both of us’. The two explained that they have such different backgrounds that it would have been unlikely for them to acquaint in any another country or city. ‘But Ceuta has Convivencia between four cultures! Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Jews!’ exclaimed Nayat. ‘We are an example of this Convivencia!’

Occupying a unique position at the Southern end of the straits of Gibraltar, sharing a border with Morocco, Ceuta is one of two populated Spanish territories located in Northern Africa. Despite Morocco’s repeated irredentist demands, the autonomous city remains subject to Spanish sovereignty. Ceuta’s complicated geo-political context, its minute territorial size of 18.5 km² and dense, heterogeneous population of approximately 85,000 habitants, make the enclave a zone of intense confrontation. Yet, Ceuta is also a place of peaceful quotidian coexistence between Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Jewish Ceutans as well as Moroccans, Spaniards from mainland Spain, and other residents that call the enclave home. The residents’ ability to forge close relationships of mutual trust and collaboration despite their ethno-religious differences has been reiterated, particularly by the Ceutan administration, as crucial for the creation of a functioning society and economy (Campbell, 2018). In this regard, the local government extolled discourse of convivencia, which promotes and celebrates the diverse ethno-religious groups (often referred to by Ceutans as culturas) living harmoniously together. Today, the rhetoric of convivencia permeates all aspects of Ceuta’s political, social, and economic life. The concept is even used to describe Ceuta’s multicultural environment, ignoring the obvious spatial and socio-economic divides between the poor Muslim-inhabited suburbs and Christian dwellings at the prosperous city centre.

Within the oft-propagated discourse of convivencia, intimate interreligious relationships like that of Nayat and Carlos are celebrated as the ultimate marker of Ceuta’s multicultural success. Their matrimonial lives are commended for exemplifying the kind of religious coexistence that convivencia presupposes. Nayat and Carlos, being Ceutan, of similar age and education, quintessentially represent this idealised mixing. Nevertheless, while interreligious marriages are publicly invoked to indicate absence of prejudice between members of distinct groups, in practice, such couples remain largely frowned upon. Accusations of prohibited intimacy vary from strict religious prohibitions, such as the forbidding of Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men to the notion that Christian women marrying Muslim men are seen as marrying beneath their station. ‘We don’t marry them, because we know them, because we live with them’, explained bluntly one Christian-Ceutan on marriages between Christian and Muslim-Ceutan highlighting that despite the euphoric discourse of convivencia, some Ceutans have great prejudices against exogamy. ‘Basically, the idea in Ceuta is, “mixed relationships, well and good, but as long as not my daughter, nor my son”’, explained well another about the general opinion of most Ceutans I have met while in Ceuta.

My research revealed that most interreligious couples in Ceuta are cross-border marriages; a majority of which do not even involve a Ceutan partner. ¹ The reluctance of Ceutan Muslims and Christians to marry despite the discursive emphasis on convivencia represents an intriguing paradox which this article aims to explore. The focus is on the Muslim–Christian courtship experiences of the much smaller number of interreligious couples residing in Ceuta in which either both partners identify as Ceutan or one partner as Ceutan and the other as Peninsular, that is, from mainland Spain. ² All the Muslim and Christian interlocutors whose experiences I draw upon in this article, thus, have Spanish citizenship and at least one partner identifies as Ceutan. The particularities of the Ceutan geo-political context provide a suitable site to explore interreligious encounters and Muslim–Christian courtship narratives from their first encounters until they marry or, occasionally, cohabit. I focus on the Muslim–Christian couples whose courtship experiences are generally perceived as successful because they were already married or cohabiting at the time of conducting this research.

Interreligious couples involving Ceutans often initiate courtships and meet in-laws with a priori expectation and knowledge that their intimacies are perceived as socially discouraged or religiously prohibited. The courtship trajectories of these mixed couples often entail keeping their relationships covert while negotiating their differences. This article therefore explores the experiences of these couples whose relationships are simultaneously idealised and denigrated and contextualises their attempts to navigate informal socio-religious boundaries through secrecy and tactical secret-sharing. I demonstrate how through secrecy Muslim–Christian couples initiate, maintain, and transform their relationships into marriages or cohabitation-arrangements accepted and acknowledged by their families and communities. In so doing, I question the meaning and implications of secret courtships, in relation to whom is secrecy used, how the level of intimacy is eventually revealed and how secrecy and secret-sharing interact with the official discourse of convivencia.

The article is divided into various sections with the first discussing Ceuta’s geo-political context. I then present the relevant literature, before outlining the anthropological methodologies adopted in conducting this research. The subsequent core sections focus on the opposite sides of secret courtship – the concealment and the revelation of religiously mixed intimacy. I explore the experiences of interreligious couples as they transition from making acquaintance to secretly courting and later introducing their partners to their respective families. I illustrate that those couples who succeed in mobilising tactics of secrecy and secret-sharing are rewarded by greater acceptance from their families and communities. By postponing the revelation of the nature of their relationship to others, interreligious couples mobilise the period of secrecy to create a unique space and time essential for negotiating their differences and future revelation of their relationship to the world.

Mixed couples in Ceutan Convivencia

Research on Muslim–Christian couples generally focuses on European and North American contexts where Muslims are a minority population (Al-Yousuf, 2006; Sadegh and Zammit, 2018), and less often, Muslim-majority contexts (Therrien, 2012, 2020; Van Niekerk and Verkuyten, 2018). However, Muslims and Christians in Ceuta do not align with classical majority-minority group formations. While there are no exact data on the number of members of each religious community present in Ceuta, my interlocutors – including local activists and politicians – estimate that Christians and Muslims are present in equal numbers, with only slightly more Christians. Hindus and Jews are far fewer; ³ nonetheless, convivencia discourse portrays the four communities as equals. The experiences of Muslim–Christian Ceutan couples must be understood against the backdrop of the relationships between their respective communities, marked by the overarching context that bridges Europe and Africa and where Spanish citizens with diverging ethno-religious identities have political representation and possess equal legal rights.

Ceutans take pride in their long history of mixing of peoples, characterised by the enclaves’ great trade and social mobility. The term convivencia, however, was only coined in the early-twentieth century by historians to denote how they imagined the mutual coexistence between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Moorish Iberian Peninsula in the medieval period (Catlos, 2018). In the 1980s, the term was given a new lease of life when Spain’s bid to enter the European Union (EU) required a revision of its border policy and the regularisation of its residents; particularly in its North African enclaves where the presence of Muslim residents on Spanish territory was still largely ignored and Muslim residents were undocumented. Spain therefore built permanent borders around Ceuta and its sister city Melilla, while granting citizenship to Muslims residing in these territories. During the same period, convivencia discourse was being employed to (re)define the enclave’s identity and reality (Campbell, 2018). The discourse concretised a deep-rooted ideal for the enclave with the aim of promoting local stability and averting fears that Spain might accede to Morocco’s long-standing request to obtain Ceuta’s sovereignty, or a future Muslim-majority enclave would change its loyalties from the Spanish to the Moroccan Kingdom (Moffette, 2010). In 1995, convivencia discourse even facilitated the enclave’s bid for the status of an autonomous city by emphasising that Ceuta’s multicultural reality differs from that of the province of Cadiz, the municipality to which Ceuta previously belonged to.

Convivencia has been loosely translated in literature as ‘coexistence’ (Driessen, 1992; Soifer, 2009); yet, this does not encapsulate the whole definition as understood by Ceutans. Convivencia, they explain, promotes mutual respect and conviviality between the communities through mixing and forging of strong relationships between their members, not mere antagonistic tolerance. Despite a hierarchy in terms of living conditions and access to resources and labour, Ceutans still resort discursively to convivencia as a prime feature of Ceutan identity. It is only in deeper conversations that Ceutans lament about discrimination and socio-economic inequalities that they experience. Muslim-Ceutans are perceived by most Spaniards as permanent guests who have been graciously gifted citizenship; a gesture meriting eternal gratitude (Campbell, 2021; Rontomé, 2012). Christians often argue that Muslims are the primary source of social and economic instability, while Muslims blame social marginalisation and lack of economic and educational opportunities for the high rates of unemployment and hashish border-trafficking within their community.

To date, the city is awarded regular funding from central government in Madrid to support convivencia-related projects and events, including an annual convivencia trophy-prize given to a nominee for their work in propagating multiculturalism. Inclusive religious feasts are pointed at as testimony of the enclave’s utopian image. By celebrating difference and exalting convivencia, the discourse unites diverse ethno-religious identifications and communities under the umbrella of shared national identity; ‘I am Muslim and she is Christian, but we’re both Ceutan, supposedly both Spanish. We respect each other. This is Ceuta’, explains Dalila, a Muslim-Ceutan from El Principe neighbourhood. Muslim-Ceutans, in particular, employ convivencia to break away from the binary logic that only recognises Christians of Spanish origin to be Ceutan and considers all the enclave’s Muslim residents as Moroccan (Campbell, 2017). As Campbell (2012) observes, discourse of convivencia endows the identities of ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ Ceutan with a meaning which assists in the construction of relationships of trust which cut across these same categorical identities. Interreligious couples form a privileged site to explore the everyday experiences of convivencia, because although mixed marriages are the ultimate relationships of trust, interreligious couples may seek to use these marriages as ‘tactics against the political construction of difference’ (Sant Cassia, 2018), while simultaneously acting as go-betweens for the Christian and Muslim communities in the establishment of convivencia.

While Muslims and Christians do forge many close relations based on trust (confianza) and respect (respeto), they also encounter many contradictions between the local discourse and the way the concept actually plays out in their everyday lives. This article studies this through the lens of Muslim–Christian couples’ courtship experiences to highlight the ambiguities between the hegemonic categorical discourse that celebrates mixed marriages and these couples’ narratives of being ‘forced’ to conceal their intimacies. Through the analysis of how Muslim–Christian partners deal with social pressures and manage the private and public dynamics of their relationships during courtship, this article sheds light on the problematisation of their relationships and the tensions existing behind the aura of Ceutan convivencia, while adding an empirical understanding of the impact of mixed couples as agents of social change.

‘Mixed’ secrecy and secret-sharing

Scholarship on mixed couples often highlights the theoretical debate on how to define ‘mixed’ (Cerchiaro, 2016; Collet, 2012), the socio-religious and legal regularisation or restriction of mixed marriages (De Hart, 2015; Hirsch et al., 2018), and the rates, attitudes, and reactions to their existence as indicators of societal integration (Arweck and Nesbitt, 2010; Blau et al., 1984). In line with Connolly (2009), however, this article adopts a micro-ethnographic perspective by seeking to study the mixed couples’ agency to create, develop, and maintain intimacy through secrecy. The article adds the courtship narratives of mixed couples to the burgeoning literature on contemporary experiences of convivencia (Campbell, 2018, 2021; Suárez-Navaz, 2004; Thorne, 2013).

Georg Simmel (1950) proposed that all social relations ‘can be characterised by the amount and kind of secrecy within them and around them’ (p. 331). Whereas in early anthropological work, the concept of secrecy was observed as carrying negative, antisocial connotations (Jones, 2014) and associated with the ‘primitive’ and ‘unconscious’ (Herdt, 2003: 214), later anthropologists draw on Simmel (1906) and Foucault’s (1980) theoretical foundations to recognise the potential secrecy – concealment and revelation, exclusion and inclusion – has in constituting self, society and even culture. By definition secrecy is exclusionary (Tefft, 1980) but this article also shows how it is a means by which people manage perilous social situations, form social relationships, and construct collective identities (Manderson et al., 2015). Intimate partners, families, closed communities, even corporations and governments, function around secret-keeping and telling. Rather than secrets per se, this article studies the role of secrecy in interreligious courtship; to whom and at which point the secret is revealed. In line with Gable (1997), ‘the content of the secret is less sociologically significant than the way it is shared or not shared in a society’ (p. 230).

Certain types of relationships, predominantly romantic ones that are considered illicit or frowned upon – interracial (Kaba, 2011), extra-marital (Haram, 2005), and same-sex relationships (Herdt, 2011), for instance – may require heightened secrecy. Secret romantic relationships have gathered attention in social psychology and family studies on whether they are undesirable, encumbering, dissatisfying, and burdensome (Foster et al., 2010; Richardson, 1988) or alternatively, generate greater romantic attraction (Wegner, 2013). Little, however, has been researched on secrecy involving religiously mixed couples and their process of disclosing information to others. Secrecy is often associated with reduced feelings of authenticity (McDonald et al., 2020); or a generative mechanism by which people resist social control. This article, however, presents a complex setting in which secrecy is a key agentic tool utilised by my interlocutors to transform their frowned upon interreligious relationships into socially accepted ones; often even applauded within the existing, overarching discourse of convivencia.

In From Duty to Desire, Collier (1997) studies the courtship experiences in the small Andalusian village of Los Olivos in the 1960s and revisited in the 1980s in order to study the villagers’ development of ‘modern subjectivity’. The difference was stark. While in the 1960s, they spoke to her about partner choice which needed to be balanced by social obligations, in the 1980s, people tended to speak of romantic love and partnership marriages. She characterises these in terms of the shift from the ‘traditional’ couples of the 1960s who publicly courted for extended periods while being chaperoned to the ‘modern’ people of the 1980s who despised prolonged courtships and sought privacy. My interlocutors, however, while defining themselves as modern for choosing their own partners despite transgressing social norms, forge intimate relationships (as friends, neighbours, classmates, colleagues) which are public and fitting Ceuta’s convivencia; it is the romantic aspect of their relationships that they conceal. These couples consider secrecy to be something engendered by the very nature of their undesirable relationships and justify the secrecy as necessary for maintaining social harmony. Deeper analysis, however, reveals that through successful tactics of secrecy and secret-sharing, these couples create a unique space and time to secretly court, while navigating, interpreting, and negotiating ethno-religious norms and boundaries.

Methodological considerations

This research is based on 14 months of anthropological fieldwork conducted in Ceuta between 2015 and 2016, ⁴ multiple informal conversations and in-depth semi-structured interviews with partners residing in the enclave who at their first meeting identified as members of different ethno-religious groups. Formal interviews typically lasted for 1 hour and most spouses were interviewed several times over the course of fieldwork, both in single and joint interviews. Conversations took place mainly in Spanish while less often in English or Arabic depending on interviewees’ language preferences. Conducting participant observation allowed me to observe how spouses communicate with each other. Inspired by Bertaux (1981), interviews with these couples focused on their topical life stories, posing questions about their courtship experience, marriage choices and expectations, familial and ethno-religious backgrounds, matrimonial lives, life in Ceuta and convivencia. Through the snowball effect, interlocutors introduced me to other couples in similar situations. During my time in Ceuta, my interlocutors welcomed me to their homes, invited me to cafés, places of work, weddings, social and family events, religious celebrations, excursions, and venues they hosted or attended. As a female researcher and an ‘outsider’, having no involvement in local politics, I was granted access to both men and women of both Muslim and Christian backgrounds. For anonymity, I use pseudonyms that nevertheless reflect my interlocutors’ gender, age, and background.

In total, this article analyses the courtship experiences of 13 couples; five of which were cases in which upon acquaintance, the male partner identified as Muslim and the female as Christian and in the remaining eight couples, the female partner identified as Muslim and the male partner as Christian. My Muslim informants generally agree that Muslim marriages may be celebrated between Muslim men and Christian or Jewish women, but Muslim women are prohibited from marrying (at least religiously) non-Muslim men. The higher number of Muslim-Ceutan women among my interlocutors that initiated relationships with Christian men is therefore interesting. In Ceuta, as opposed to its Moroccan neighbour, interreligious couples may choose to celebrate civil marriages regardless of their religious backgrounds. Moreover, to focus the research on couples that acquainted while identifying with different communities, all my interlocutors had initiated courtship prior to any formal religious conversion. Christians in religiously mixed relationships may celebrate a canonical marriage, however no interlocutors celebrated a church marriage and no Muslim informants converted to Christianity. Conversely, some Christian partners did formally convert to Islam before or during marriage. To further contextualise the research, I conducted additional interviews and had conversations with religious figures, state authorities, and residents of the enclave.

While ‘interreligious’ couples are generally defined by the partners’ ‘religious differences’ their different religious identifications did not always produce conflict and the spouses did not always have different faiths. Deeper observation of the Ceutan context revealed that religious identifications are ascribed at birth, and being ethnic based, religious conversion does not transform an interreligious relationship to a mono-religious one as even the same converts described their marriages as ‘religiously’ or ‘culturally’ mixed. I focus on Muslim–Christian couples who at the time of research were already married or cohabiting. In many ways, therefore, this article focuses on couples whose courtship experiences are framed as successful. In spite of contestations or support of their close kin, friends, and ethno-religious communities, these couples materialised their intimacies into cohabitations or marriages, celebrating civil or religious marriages, at times both. I have nonetheless, also met people who reported that under the similar circumstances they ended up terminating their interreligious relationships. While the courtship experiences of the couples informing this article are in hindsight deemed successful, they are not without challenges and the involvement of secrecy, the central theme of this article, is considered by them as a contributing factor to its success.

Concealing: from first acquainting to secretly courting

‘We know each other since practically forever’, answered Pedro when I asked how he and Habiba had met. They grew up in the 1980s as next-door neighbours in a relatively mixed, working-class barrio. Both Habiba and Pedro come from large families, having eight and six siblings, respectively. Although the parents were not particularly close friends, they nonetheless supported their children’s friendships in spite of their religious differences and as kids they were always welcome in each other’s homes. ‘This is true convivencia!’ exclaimed both spouses during a joint interview. When in their teens, the two grew secretly involved they found themselves in profound dilemma; ‘firstly, because of religion, and secondly, because we were like family’, reasoned Habiba. The couple felt guilty about their romantic venture and considered it to be a kind of betrayal of their parents’ trust and hospitality which had allowed them and their siblings to be more than just neighbours. In their mind, a romantic relationship overstepped the dictated boundaries extolled by convivencia into intimacy prohibited by religious and social norms.

The detailed narratives of first encounter provided by Ceutan interreligious couples vary, yet most met at school, at work, in the neighbourhood, through mutual friends or venues. Faisal and Pilar, for instance, were both 17 and students at the same Ceutan college when they met. Faisal, identifying as ‘culturally Muslim’, recounted how despite liking each other, neither of them dared to take a step towards the other – ‘because such relationships are frowned upon’ – until 1 day, he put aside his inhibitions and while on a school outing, he summoned courage to ask Pilar out. ‘And the rest is history’, he grinned now 18 years and two children later. Similarly, Isabela and Hakim lived merely two blocks apart; ‘I was very young in my barrio playing with my girlfriends when one of those days we saw each other and then we started to see each other daily. Only as friends’, Isabela was quick to point out as she described her first encounter with her Muslim-Ceutan husband some 30 years prior. Many Ceutan interreligious couples tended to have met at a younger age, having grown up together as neighbours, classmates, or long-time family friends. This, Ceutans believe, is all thanks to Ceuta’s convivencia as people from different backgrounds lead overlapping lives and are not precluded from developing lasting friendships in their everyday lives.

In contrast, the narratives provided by Ceutans in relationships with Peninsulars, – a term used by the residents of Ceuta to refer to Spaniards from mainland Spain – indicate that these couples tend to meet when older, in their mid- or late-20s, often when the Peninsulars move to Ceuta for work or sometimes when the Ceutan partner moved to mainland Spain for higher education. For instance, David from Cadiz was deployed in Ceuta’s military base, where he met his future wife Naima, a Muslim-Ceutan also in her late-20s and serving in the same military regiment. Conversely, Amina and José met in Madrid, after being introduced by a mutual friend, after the former moved there to study podiatry. Amina’s devout Muslim father had always emphasised the importance of education and Ceuta’s university provided limited opportunities. By the time the couple acquainted, Amina had reached the end of her studies, and both had just turned 30. Lucia and Bilal were also in their early-30s when they first met in person in Madrid. For years, they knew each other on an online gaming forum, but only met when Lucia’s partner passed away in a terrible car accident and Bilal headed to the Spanish Capital to console her.

Secrecy appears as a common denominator among all the interreligious couples meeting and courting in Ceuta. Many couples consider the reasons for secrecy to be self-evident; fear of repercussions such as bans, prejudice, disapproval, or even worse reactions that could jeopardise their relationships with their families, friends, and each other. Most interlocutors frankly claimed that they deemed secrecy as the only conceivable way to maintain an interreligious courtship in Ceuta. As descended by Jones (2014), there is a strong nexus between secrecy and risk. The couples juggle secrecy and the risk attached to entering a relationship with heavy consequences should it be prematurely exposed. Most couples therefore opt to have secret courtships for several months or even years before informing their social groups and families of their intimate relationships.

I use the term ‘secret’ relationship or courtship in the same fashion as my interlocutors; the (typically early) stage in the couples’ trajectories when some form of intimacy is actualised and which they actively conceal from at least some individuals. Secret courtship, therefore, does not necessarily mean that no one – other than the couple – is aware of the nature of the relationship, nor that the couples’ meeting places are necessarily secluded locations. Whereas some interreligious couples might choose to conceal their relationship from everyone, most are perfectly content to disclose at least some aspects of their relationship to a select few. With only a few exceptions, couples usually trust their close peers who live their courtship alongside them. The romantic aspect of their relationship very often remains secret from persons assumed to disapprove of their intimacy.

Yusef and Angela, for instance, met through mutual friends and from its conception, their friends were fully aware of the relationship. Angela introduced Yusef to her family as the ‘Muslim friend’ who hung out in the same group of teen friends. In the name of Ceutan convivencia, Yusef met Angela’s parents and entered their home in the company of their other friends. Yet, the couple described these early courtship years as a period of secrecy because neither they nor their friends revealed the young couple’s romantic interest to their relatives and the couple only met when in the company of their friends. In the early-90s, Isabela and Hakim were too young to be allowed out of their barrio, so courtship meant meeting in the company of friends as they could not afford being caught together alone. When Isabela’s mother had her suspicions confirmed by a nosy neighbour who informed her that her daughter was seen in the company of a Muslim boy, further secrecy was deemed necessary. ‘Since he was Muslim and I’m Christian, my mother said, “your father isn’t going to like this at all,” so we started meeting less, here and there…’, admitted Isabela. Eventually, Isabella’s mother took part in the secret-keeping process by hiding her daughter’s whereabouts from Isabella’s father.

Secrecy produces both new boundaries and new alliances (Piot, 1993). The individuals with whom the relationship is shared are burdened with discretion; should it be required, they must also aid in concealing the relationship through deceit. Secret-sharing therefore always intersects with the virtues of confidentiality and discretion as friends, siblings, and sometimes even parents collaborate in the secret-keeping. Secrecy generates intimacy, not only between partners, but also between the couple and the person with whom the secret is entrusted, creating a system of reciprocity (Mauss, 1990 [1954]). In exchange for the secret, the individual is held accountable for secret-keeping. Complicity is the price as well as the reason for secret-sharing and although secrecy is by definition exclusionary (Tefft, 1980), it simultaneously generates a strong communal effect among those sharing the secret. In retrospect, most spouses do not consider a secret relationship a permanent solution. Although some Ceutan interlocutors, particularly those whose interreligious relationships were prematurely found out were disappointed by how things turned out, many couples have succeeded in mobilising secrecy to reach the goal of having cohabitation or marriage acknowledged and (to varying degrees) accepted by their close kin and friends. How to introduce partners to in-laws, who and when to inform them of the intimacy are all vital steps in this process.

Revealing: from introducing to meeting the in-laws

Habiba and Pedro were terrified that the revelation of their courtship would damage the good rapport between the families. However, they were pleasantly surprised by their families’ acceptance when one of Pedro’s brothers grew suspicious and confronted them:

They respected us. Both my mother and my mother-in-law are deeply religious. My mum goes regularly to the mosque. His mum goes to church every day. Of course, it’s normal and logical that your parents would like to see you with someone of your own religion but nevertheless, they didn’t wish to create any problems for us and eventually we got married and they still respect us to this day.

While I use terms such as ‘acceptance’, Ceutans in interreligious relationships and marriages universally speak about acquiring ‘respect’. Interreligious couples do not generally discuss trying to convince their families to rethink the boundaries or the desirability of mixed relationships, but instead focus on receiving acceptance of their relationships through mutual respect. Silence on topics surrounding religion is often strategies employed to privatise religion and any related decisions. Among my interlocutors, interreligious partners who met through their parents or whose parents were already acquainted, generally encounter less opposition to their relationships. This correlates with a reduced fear and prejudice towards the partner. Pedro boasted that Habiba’s family loves him as one of their own; ‘I think it’s because they knew him already. Him, being him’, reflected Habiba.

In all the courtship narratives provided by my interlocutors, secrecy is considered redundant when there was no outside interference inhibiting its full development. Some couples reach this point by culminating their relationships into marriage or cohabitation, in spite of their parents’ disapproval. Africa, ⁵ for example, was a pious 16-year-old Christian when she met Mustafa at her parent’s grocery, then in his late twenties. Mustafa started shopping there daily until they managed to exchange phone numbers; ‘him being older, he took it really slow’, smiled Africa, remembering their first days of secretly courting on the phone over two decades ago. Their relationship shows multiple hurdles for acceptance; difference in religion, age, and status all add to its unsuitability. ‘After a very long time, we started meeting in secret, without my parents knowing, but when my parents found out it was a challenging time’, frowned Africa. ‘A Muslim man, a lot older, and widowed with the responsibility of two kids… I guess you could understand my parents!’ When Africa turned 18, the couple crossed the border to marry religiously in Tetuán, the closest Moroccan city and she moved in with Mustafa and his young children despite the disapproval of their families. In Ceuta, elopement is not unheard of and although summarily condemned, even eloping couples find it unnecessary for their relationship to remain secret once married. Marriage, even when faced with opposition, is often experienced as the desirable result and final stage of the secretive process.

My research found that while all interreligious couples mobilised some form of secrecy, the partners’ ages, marital statuses, and socio-economic backgrounds as well as the gender of their children, impact the reactions of their families and friends. Moreover, parents whose children lived with them succeeded in exerting greater authority over the fate of their undesired relationships. This authority is exercised by both communities, and stricter on the females of their communities. Isabela’s father prohibited her from marrying Hakim even when Isabela fell pregnant at 17. When she turned 18, although parental consent was no longer required, Isabella’s father dissented marriage but allowed Hakim to move in with them. The couple had no other option but to accept because they were financially dependent on Isabela’s father and could not afford a mortgage. By the time they could, their eldest son was 7 years old.

However, Yasmina was already a divorcee raising her younger siblings when she met Jesús. ‘I was the head of the family’, she explained, ‘because my siblings were young when we were orphaned. I was the oldest. They couldn’t prohibit the relationship because I was responsible for myself’. Nonetheless, Yasmina kept her relationship with Jesús a secret from everyone until they could better negotiate the terms of their relationship. She explains,

I had never talked to a Christian man before. Perhaps I have as friends, but never as a boyfriend… no, because I didn’t want to, because I love my family, and I didn’t wish to be with a Christian.

Initially, the couple courted over the phone and it was only 3 years later when Jesús decided to have circumcision performed in Morocco and officially convert to Islam that their ‘relationship became formal’. ⁶ The long period of secrecy was used by the partners to navigate their religious differences, plan a possible future together, and reflect on their ideas of what is permissible in their respective religions, before presenting their relationship to the scrutiny of the wider public. Yasmina’s financial independence and responsibilities within the nuclear family endowed her with greater agency to pursue the illicit relationship, but this was not without the risk of her facing the prospect of marginalisation by her extended family. This was compounded by her religious views which influenced her desire to conform. Without secrecy to manage and develop their intimacy, their relationship could have been prematurely terminated.

A distinction is drawn between in-person introductions and disclosure of the intimate relationship. While occasionally these would coincide, on other occasions information would reach the partners’ families through third parties without the couple’s initiative or consent. Generally, however, my Ceutan interlocutors studied ways how to introduce their partners without revealing the level of intimacy within their relationships. Many Christian interlocutors, for instance, strategically introduce their Muslim partners to their parents as ‘the Muslim friend’. This mitigates the opposition encountered when eventually the intimacy is revealed; particularly as it reduces parents’ preconceptions that a Muslim partner would force religious conversion on their son or worse, their daughter. In this way, secret courtship proves to be an effective tool for the Muslim partner and in-laws to become acquainted without overlaying socio-religious pressures and stereotypes on the relationship. A week into their relationship, Pilar had introduced Faisal to her parents as a college Muslim friend who socialised within the same group. As friends, he therefore went to her house, spoke to her parents, and was invited to dinners along with other peers without any issues. It was only months later that they told her parents, ‘I had a good relationship (with the in-laws) from the very first day; because of course they knew me by then’, explained Faisal.

Couples face harsher obstacles when attempts to introduce their Muslim partners as friends first fail. Carlos, for instance, wanted to introduce Nayat as his work colleague, but his Christian parents detected the true nature of their relationship before even meeting her. ‘They started to inflict psychological terror!’ teared up Carlos; ‘they said, “what about this and that? What if it doesn’t go well? What are people going to say?” I tried to let everything slide and not care, but of course it hurt. My parents pressured me a lot’. At one point, the couple broke up; ‘we felt everyone was against us, everyone nosing in, not leaving us in peace!’ When they reconnected, Carlos decided it was better to leave his parents’ home altogether. Nayat, however, introduced Carlos to her devout Muslim parents 2 years later, when she had bought her own place and the couple were discussing the possibility of cohabitating.

In most courtship narratives, the meeting with the Christian in-laws preceded that with the Muslim family. My interlocutors explained that Christians are more lenient towards pre-marital relationships, while intimacy outside marriage is viewed more negatively among Muslims, meaning that partners and in-laws should only meet when there are serious marriage intentions. Meeting the Muslim in-laws is therefore often considered as a significant step towards marriage. My interlocutors admitted their dread when organising these introductory meetings even though it often exceeded their expectations with no reference whatsoever to religion. The get-together between Angela and her devout in-laws went along similar lines. ‘The truth is they received me very well’, recollected Angela despite having bitter feelings at the years-long fear of how she would not be welcomed; ‘they were very respectful!’ Religion and contentious themes were not brought up in their presence but when the meeting was over, Yusef’s father took him aside and said, ‘if you’re going to live with her, you’re going to marry her, no?’ stressing that marriage prior to cohabiting was vital. The couple resorted to celebrating a secret Muslim marriage in the presence of Yusef’s father only and a civil marriage years later inviting both sides of the family.

It is quite common that Muslim parents who have reservations or discern the courtship, would only address their concerns with their children; at times, even establishing the minimum requirements for transforming the problematic relationship into a permissible one such as through religious conversion or marriage. Their silence during these meetings with the new partner should not be interpreted as acceptance or passivity (Glenn, 2004; Ratcliffe, 1999). Couples interpret silence about their religious differences as gestures of respect – the backbone of Ceutan convivencia. Carlos, for example, described similar anxieties when recounting the strategies and diplomacy involved in setting up the first meeting with his Muslim in-laws:

We met outside of the house in a neutral place. We invited her parents for lunch. She told them she was meeting someone and they told her to invite him to the house, but she told them, better meet elsewhere. When she told them she got to know a guy, I imagine they thought he would be Muslim. In fact that must be why they said that she should bring him home for lunch. Probably so that he could request betrothal (pedida), but she invented a story just to get them out of their comfort zone, so to speak. A neutral place, not to say, ‘here I am, your enemy in your own house’, because they knew truly little of what was yet to come.

To the couple’s surprise, however, the meeting went smoothly. Only when Nayat went home did her parents ‘call to tell her that what she did, seemed very wrong to them. They felt tricked’. Nevertheless, ‘the truth is her parents were very respectful. They didn’t tell us anything’, said Carlos – a statement which may seem in conflict to the concerns they raised when alone with daughter but serves to emphasise the importance the couples place on such topics not being brought up in the company of their partner.

Conclusion

Drawing on Muslim–Christian courtship narratives provided by Ceutan and Ceutan-Peninsular couples, this article reveals how secrecy and tactical secret-sharing is a predominant strategy adopted by interreligious couples to initiate, maintain, and transform their frowned upon relationships the Ceutan context. Whereas dominant discourse views interreligious couples as the embodiment of Ceutan convivencia, the very same discourse differentiate between ethno-religious groups thus creating clear boundaries which challenge those who wish to navigate them. The fact that Ceuta is on the exterior margin of the EU, marginalised by mainland Spain and facing constant ‘migration crisis’ at its Moroccan borders explains why Ceutans find maintaining ethno-religious identities important to explain their differences and regional identity to the rest of Spain, while at the same time building bridges across, connecting through them as Ceutan and Spanish.

Whereas on one hand, interreligious marriages are perceived as key examples of the successful multicultural society that Ceutans aspire to have, on the other hand, interreligious intimacy is often considered a threat to Ceuta’s convivencia-based social cohesion, which presupposes the existence of separate, distinct groups. Although previous literature analysed how secrecy carries negative connotations of inauthenticity (Jones, 2014), this article demonstrates that secrecy can also be critical in creating meaningful relationships. My research determined that unlike the findings by Collier (1997) secrecy for these couples is more important than privacy because the narratives provided by my interlocutors show that while meeting in public places and involving friends, the nature of their relationship can remain a secret for an extensive period. Secrecy meant guaranteeing Muslim–Christian couples the space and time needed to explore their romantic feelings and to negotiate how best to embed and formalise their intimacies within the Ceutan geo-political context which both celebrates and problematises their mixed relationships.

Moreover, this article outlines the various secrecy-based tactics adopted by interreligious couples to consolidate their contested relationships into socially acceptable marriages, such as by first introducing the partner to the in-laws as a friend, religiously converting or even marrying in secret. Although it has been proposed that secrecy facilitates the process of individualism (Simmel, 1950), this article shows how interreligious couples use secret courtships not only to creatively resist social control, but also to create new strong communal bonds. When partners are first introduced as friends, parents have the time to adjust to the relationship and the original apprehensions diminish because they no longer view the new partner in terms of a priori ascribed religious preconceptions. Instead, they see them first and foremost as individuals. Likewise, when partners convert or celebrate marriages in secret, sharing these important moments with the select individuals to whom they are meaningful, the couples are adopting strategies of secrecy and selective secret-sharing aimed at legitimising their relationship to the wider audience.

As Simmel (1950) points out, ‘what is intentionally or unintentionally hidden is intentionally or unintentionally respected’ (p. 330). Indeed, the Ceutan context shows how interreligious couples’ strategies of secrecy do in fact gain them the acceptance of their families and communities because they develop their intimacies while seemingly conforming to the convivencia norms and socio-religious constraints imposed upon them. Convivencia discourse provides the language of mutual respect which serves as the basis for the development of intimacy between interreligious partners, friends, and families, but while Ceuta’s convivencia is applauded for generating mixed couples in fact it is secrecy, which starts out as a liminal anti-structural tactic that ends up being the foundation of convivencia’s success.