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In-Depth Information
forced the Madrid ministry to declare war in
the latter part of the year, and General L
EO
-
POLDO
O'D
ONNELL
, the prime minister, took
the field in person to lead a formidable mili-
tary force across the Strait of Gibraltar. A
competent leader but unable to accelerate
the pace of his preparations or operations,
O'Donnell took months to get his forces on
the march. In the meantime the nationalist
sentiment in Morocco had risen to unex-
pected heights, and the new sultan had
assembled a large army in the interior, near
the city of Tetuán. This was an old battle-
ground between Spaniards and Moroccans,
destroyed by Castilian invaders in the 15th
century and repopulated by Muslim refu-
gees expelled by the edicts of F
ERDINAND
V
and I
SABELLA
I. After a three-week march
from C
EUTA
O'Donnell's force was con-
fronted by some 30,000 fierce but ill-orga-
nized tribal warriors who attacked in a
frontal assault outside the city. Somewhat
more numerous, the Spaniards also had the
advantage of firepower and disciplined orga-
nization. The Moroccans were defeated with
heavy losses. After a few more minor skir-
mishes, the sultan sued for peace, conceding
some additional territory adjacent to the
existing Spanish enclaves and recognizing
Spanish control in the territory of Ifni along
Morocco's Atlantic coast.
General O'Donnell returned to Spain in
triumph and was named duke of Tetuán. No
Spanish commander since the end of the
Napoleonic Wars had achieved a comparable
military victory or such popular admiration.
Texas in the United States was gradually
explored and mapped between 1519 and
1684. French claims to the area were first
advanced in the late 1600s on the basis of
their activities in L
OUISIANA
. Spain began
establishing garrisons at key points mainly
as a check to Comanche raids. As a result
of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the
United States revived the old French claim
to the adjacent area of Texas but aban-
doned this claim in 1819. Two years later
the independence of the republic of M
EX
-
ICO
ended Spanish rule in Texas. This vast
area (approximately 262,000 square miles)
has subsequently been an independent
republic, a part of the United States, a
member of the Southern Confederacy, and
once again a state in the Union. Its Span-
ish heritage has been an important factor
in its life and culture since the arrival of
the Spaniards.
Theotokópoulos, Doménikos
See
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
A notable extension of Spain's great collec-
tions of paintings and sculpture, the Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza forms (albeit unoffi-
cially) an extension of the P
RADO
, and its
Buen Retiro and Reina Sofía galleries. It
was born of the collecting enthusiasms of
several generations of a wealthy German
mercantile dynasty whose holdings were
ultimately assembled in a Swiss villa after
World War II. Baron Hans Heinrich Thys-
sen-Bornemisza (whose Hungarian moth-
er's family name had been added to that of
his father's) had, with the advice of art his-
torians, assembled some 800 paintings and
Texas
As part of the gradual movement of Span-
ish control northward from N
EW
S
PAIN
,
the region constituting the present state of
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