Tangier the years leading up to the First World War, Tangier had a population of about 40,000, about half Muslim, a quarter Jewish, and a quarter European Christians. Of the Europeans, about three-quarters were Spanish artisans and labourers. In 1912, Morocco was effectively partitioned between France and Spain; Spanish Morocco covered the country's far north and far south while the French protectorate covered the central remainder. The last Sultan of independent Morocco, Moulay Hafid, was exiled to the Sultanate Palace in the Tangier kasbah after his forced abdication in favour of his brother Moulay Yusef. Tangier was made an international zone
Tangier and during other spying periods of the 19th and 20th centuries is legendary. Tangier acquired the reputation of a spying and smuggling centre and attracted foreign capital due to political neutrality and commercial liberty at that time. It was via a British bank in Tangier that the Bank of England in 1943 for the first time obtained samples of the high-quality forged British currency produced by the Nazis in "Operation Bernhard". The city has also been a subject for many spy fiction books and films (see Tangier in popular culture). Tangier is twinned with: Tangier Tangier (Arabic: طنجة, Berber: ⵟⴰⵏⴵⴰ)