The main aim of the present work is to study and analyze a reaction-diffusion fractional version of the SIR epidemic mathematical model by means of the non-local and non-singular ABC fractional derivative operator with complete memory effects. Existence and uniqueness of solution for the proposed fractional model is proved. Existence of an optimal control is also established. Then, necessary optimality conditions are derived. As a consequence, a characterization of the optimal control is given. Lastly, numerical results are given with the aim to show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy, which provides significant results using the AB fractional derivative operator in the Caputo sense, comparing it with the classical integer one. The results show the importance of choosing very well the fractional characterization of the order of the operators., This is a preprint of a paper whose final and definite form is with 'Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems -- Series S' (DCDS-S), ISSN 1937-1632 (print), ISSN 1937-1179 (online), available at [http://aimsciences.org/journal/1937-1632]