Melilla, Spain

Monday was Eid al Adha, or Eid Kbir, a big Muslim celebration which I wrote a little about last year (here and here). T had a few days off from teaching, and we decided weeks ago that we wanted to go somewhere that wasn't Morocco when the Eid break came. When I told my friend Michael this, he wrote (whether sarcastically or not, I don't know) that he was surprised I didn't want to stay and experience the Eid. The truth is, when called upon, I can drum up a great deal of respect, or at the very least tolerance, for a wide variety of cultural practices. But that doesn't mean I am interested in participating in or observing them. For goodness' sake, there are aspects of my own culture that I'm not interested in – like keeping track of celebrity marriages, divorces, and international adoptions, or watching American Idol. So if you're interested in reading more about Eid al Adha, you'll have to look somewhere else, like here.

Because I went to Spain.

Just another gorgeous mountain view on a drive through Morocco...

When we walked out of our apartment at five o'clock on Saturday morning, it was quite dark outside. The cold rain that had been falling all night was turning into a messy, slushy snow, and I felt a great sense of relief to be leaving Ifrane. We were leaving so early because we had found out the previous day that a couple we knew was going to be driving to our intended destination of Melilla, so we gave up our plans to take the train and opted for the greater comfort of a car ride. (We still had to take the six hour train ride to get back home on Tuesday, but that was okay.)

We had selected Melilla as our destination because it met our two criteria of 1) not being a Moroccan city and 2) still being in Morocco. (We are in a bit of a lazy phase when it comes to travel.) Melilla is one of two Spanish cities that's in (or surrounded by) Morocco. We visited the other, Ceuta/Sebta, last year.


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Melilla at sunset

Melilla has two very different faces. I'll start with the first, more pleasant one:  Melilla, a European oasis in Africa, a beautiful, multicultural Mediterranean city with a very interesting history.

Typical modernista (Art Nouveau) architecture

What we call Melilla today was founded early in the eighth century. Contemporary Melillans are (at least according to tourist brochures and the city's museums) proud of their multiculturalism. Of course many of the city's residents are Spanish, but many are Berber (in fact, Melilla's Muslim population is so substantial that the city was, to my surprise and slight disappointment, effectively shut down for the Eid). There are also notable populations of Jews and Hindus and, according to a waitress from Ecuador, many Latinos.

For T and me, needing a break from Morocco, the sights and sounds and smells of Melilla were refreshing (even the requisite jamón hanging as decoration in bars didn't bother me). The city was impressively windy while we were there, but otherwise the weather was nice, and we spent much of our time walking around the parks, exploring the old town (Medina Sidounia), or sitting at cafés or bars.

Oh, the color of that water!

I know this is a pretty busy photograph, but I like how well it captures the interesting mix of old and new in Melilla. You can see the walls of the old city with newer apartment buildings in the background.

Melilla's medina is a lot different from the medinas in Moroccan cities. I don't think I saw a single souvenir shop! There are, however, at least three free museums in the old city.

This was the best cappuccino I have ever had in my life. Seriously.

Manfred and his wife Sydia drove us to Melilla. On Sunday night, we went out with them for tapas, which in Melilla still come free with your drink.

Sydia's fluent Spanish came in handy; since she's vegetarian, she helped me figure out which tapas I could eat.

The other face of Melilla is not so beautiful. One evening, Manfred drove us around the perimeter of the city (in total, Melilla takes up just a little over 12 km²). All around the city is a terrible and formidable fence, which Manfred repeatedly said reminded him of the wall in Berlin. (Of course the fence does not extend to the ocean side of the city, but that is watched by guards.) Actually, it isn't even a fence; it's three fences, each six meters (almost seven yards) tall, topped with barbed wire and equipped with motion sensors and cameras.

Because of its unique position as a Spanish city on the continent of Africa, Melilla is a popular destination for poor Africans – from Morocco and elsewhere – desperate to get to Europe. The fence is there to keep the poor – and their poverty – out of the more affluent Spanish city as well as mainland Spain and the rest of Europe.

 

I hadn't thought much about this fence on Saturday when we entered Melilla. I was tired by the time we got there, and the line of cars waiting to get into Melilla was unbelievably long and chaotic. It took us hours to get in, and that was even with Manfred paying a German-speaking Moroccan to speed us through the line (no, in case you're wondering, that's not something I would have chosen to do). As I sat in the car that morning, I was mesmerized by a constant stream of Moroccans walking back out of Melilla into the Moroccan border town of Beni Ensar carrying plastic grocery bags, bringing little pieces of prosperity back with them.

On Tuesday morning, when T and I walked out of Melilla the same way those Moroccans had come, I was struck (but not remotely surprised) by how quickly and easily we were able to walk out of Spain into Morocco. I wanted to take pictures of Beni Ensar to compare to my photographs of the beautiful and prosperous Melilla, but I just didn't have the heart to. If that short walk from one city into the next had been my first entrance into Morocco, I imagine I might have taken pictures – of the piles of trash, of the despondent and dirty men sitting in them, of the piss-smelling corners where fences and dilapidated buildings met, of the bony and wary kittens sitting in the streets. 

Partly because I had a wonderful vacation in Melilla, and partly because of the sense of helplessness I feel when I think about it, I'm choosing not to write at length about this other face of Melilla. Anyway, it's already been covered well by this article which is a bit long, but I encourage everyone to read it.