The only city in North Africa to feature a bullring, Oran presented a peculiar demographical and political profile in the French colony of Algeria. Violent place of conflicts between communities, notably French, Spanish and Jewish ones, since the end of the nineteenth century, it became during the 1930s a central arena of the campaign for a reform of Algerian institutions. In 1936–37, a partial and short-lived ‘mixed front’ gathered people from both the French leftwing and the Algerian organisations. Largely exaggerated by its adversaries, its significance proved crucial to understand the tensions that crossed the whole French empire at that time.