sentences:  Silvestre's force comprised twenty thousand Spanish soldiers plus 5,000 "Regulares" as Moroccans in the Spanish Army were called.Of the Spanish troops, well over half were completely illiterate conscripts from the poorest elements of Spanish society who had been sent to Morocco with minimal training.Despite Silvestre's assurances that his equipment was sufficient to defeat the Rifians, in fact about three-quarters of the rifles at the Melilla arsenal were in shoddy condition due to poor maintenance, and a report from late 1920, which Silvestre had never bothered to read warned that many of the rifles in Melilla arsenal were either unusable or more of a danger to the soldier firing them than to the enemy.