Spain's colonial experience in Northern Africa gave at first an opportunity for geographers to assert their public presence through ad hoc institutions and research. The ultimate objective was to gain support for the colonization of Morocco from a population that still was under the impact of the recent loss of the remnants of a once huge colonial empire. The vicissitudes of the establishment of the Spanish Protectorate delayed the implementation of a real colonization policy until the end of the Spanish civil war. The "africanism" of the military officers, General Franco among them, explains that several projects of regional planning appeared during the 1940s. Such projects show the contradictions of the regional planning policy of the government but nevertheless they were pioneering undertakings in post-war Spain as they were intended to be a propaganda show-case for the military regime. Then, however, Spanish geography missed this opportunity due to the late institutionalization of the discipline and, therefore, regional planning remained for several decades the domain of other professionals with the required technical training.