Río de Oro (Spanish for "Gold River", Arabic: وادي الذهب wādī-að-ðahab, often transliterated as Oued Edhahab) is, with Saguia el-Hamra, one of the two territories that formed the Spanish province of Spanish Sahara after 1969; it had been taken as a Spanish colonial possession in the late 19th century. Its name seems to come from an east-west river which was supposed to have run through it. The river was thought to have largely dried out – a wadi, as the name indicates – or have disappeared underground.