Massacre of Saïda (1881)

In 1881, the Franco-Algerian Company recruited day labourers from the economically depressed south-east of Spain to work the esparto grass harvest in French Algeria. Workers were offered passage and travel assistance for their families, though in practice they were eventually required to pay for their own travel and to purchase food from company-run stores. Most of the recruited labourers came from Almería, with additional workers from Murcia and Alicante.

In late April 1881, a rebellion that had broken out in Tunisia spread instability into Algeria, and the insurgent leader Bou-Amama took charge of a movement opposing French colonial occupation. On 11 June 1881, insurgents associated with this movement seized the locality of Khalfallah, in the countryside around Saïda, south of Oran. During this seizure, approximately 190 Spanish esparto harvesters were killed. Many of the wives of the workers present were raped during the attack. The insurgents also took roughly 600 people hostage and set fire to about 100,000 quintals of harvested esparto grass.

News of the massacre reached the nearby city of Oran on 17 June 1881 and reached Spain the following day, 18 June 1881. In the weeks that followed, through the rest of June and into July 1881, large numbers of Spanish survivors — described as arriving naked and hungry — made their way to Oran seeking passage back to Spain. In total, an estimated 10,000 Spanish immigrants were repatriated to Spain in the aftermath of the violence and the broader instability associated with the uprising.