The years of World War II were fertile in the projection by several authors of irredentist imaginaries across the Strait of Gibraltar (after all the Strait was to become the "neuralgic point of nationality" to them):[7] according to the africanist Tomás García Figueras "Spain and Morocco are like two halves of the same geographical unity".[8] Historian Jaume Vicens Vives (1940) talked about a "vital space" conceptualised as a "geopolitical basic unit".[9] Rodolfo Gil Benumeya traced the links back to the Neolithic, pointing to a common Ibero-Berber People living at both sides of the Strait.[10] Gil Benumeya and Hernández Pacheco stressed the strengthening of those links due to Morocco being part of "Hispania Tingitana". Some of these authors, transcending historical arguments, even pointed at a Spanish-African union during "the Tertiary" when the Strait would not have existed.[11]