Hello Vincent:
By checking again, I think I misunderstood the reference ranual, sorry about that. It indicates that MODFEN should be 0 in order to release the SS pin as GPIO, but I guess that this is only when you configure a specific pin to perform the SS function, which is not the case here, because you do not define any pin to be the SS input/output.
So, in conclusion that code should not be neccessary. Did you already try and you were able to control the pin?
Regards!
Jorge Gonzalez