Melilla or Mellilia is an autonomous city Spanish wedged on the north-eastern coast of the Eastern Rif, on the the Mediterranean is located in Nador province. Managed as a part of the Province of Málaga before March 14th, 1995, it is a Free port; principal industry is the fishing. The transborder trade (legal or of smuggling) is the other important source of incomes. In 1994, it had a population of 63 670 inhabitants.
Geography
The Spanish enclave of Melilla (one pronounces Méliya) is established on the Mediterranean coast of the Maghreb on the southernmost oriental party and of the Cape of the Three Forks. This area is located on the Eastern part of Rif. The city occupies the center of the gulf of Gourougou, of the name of the volcano which dominates it.
The climate is of Mediterranean type southernmost with strong precipitations in December and January, periods when the night temperatures are lower than 10° C. the temperatures of July can reach 40°C. The summer is very dry.
History
This enclave originates in a site strengthened on a rock headland separating two types of coasts. In north, impressive basaltic cliffs, in the south, a low coast regularized by the maritime action which continues, in Moroccan territory by a vast lagoon called “Mar Chica” (Small Sea) where the town of Nador is established.
- The strengthened site originates in an establishment phenician (the Rusadir antique) then occupied by the Roman Empire then Byzantine.
- Towards the end of the 7th century the city was conquered by the Islamic caliphate Omeyade,
- Towards 791 is conquered by Idris Ier founder of the kingdom of Morocco,
- In 859, the city underwent destroying raids of the Viking S which set fire to it.
- In 927, the city is attached to the Émirat of Cordoue but this fastening lasts little of time and the city is again subjected by the new dynasties emergent maroco-Moslem women Almoravides (about 1079), Almohades (1141), Mérinides (1217) and Wattassides (About 1465) the latter preserved it until 1497.
- In 1497 the city was taken by the Spaniards thus marking the beginning of the Spanish colonial expansions in southern bank of the Mediterranean.
- On November 6th, 2007, Melilla is visited officially by the Spanish sovereign Juan Carlos Ier, visit at once criticized by the Moroccan authorities because on November 6th is the festival of the green Marche in Morocco, in other words the recovery of the Sahara formerly ocupée by Spain. Some habitans of Rif (of the towns of Nador and Beni Nsar) exceeded one of the two fences which mark the border, trying to penetrate in Melilla the day of the visit of king d' Espagne.
Borders of Melilla
Today, the town of Melilla is limited by a border in the form of half-circle materialized by double punctuated system of nettings of watchtowers of glass and of concrete, the unit was financed by the European Union. The whole is severely controlled by the Spanish Civil guard which has an electronic system of detection seems it enough sophisticated. This border is bored of two points of passage towards the Rif for the vehicles and the pedestrians, one of these two border posts being reserved with the only inhabitants of Melilla. These two customs stations always are very encumbered, of day like night.The reasons of this border marked by an iron curtain are on the one hand the permanent attempts at clandestine passages of populations of the Maghreb and the Black Africa, hoping to reach the European Union. In addition this door of Spain has been used to introduce in Europe the derivative products of the cannabis and for one recent period American southern cocaine forwarding by the large Moroccan ports (Casablanca in particular).
This border is however difficult to control because of a hispano-Morrocan agreement dating from Spanish Protectorate from 1912 on the Rif and which authorizes the Riffian inhabitants of a zone of 40 km around Melilla to cross it by presenting only their indentity card. Conversely, the inhabitants of Melilla can go in this same zone to the same conditions. This agreement of reciprocity obliges the police force of the air and of the borders Spanish to carry out a routine inspection of identities at the harbor station or the airport for all the passengers some is their nationality, if they want to regain the Spanish Peninsula.
The city is thus insulated, although it belongs to the telephone district of Malaga and that it is connected by three daily maritime movements towards Malaga and Almeria as well as ten flights, them also daily, worms certain cities of the Peninsula (Madrid, Grenade, Almeria and especially Malaga). Since the closing of the border algéro-Morrocan woman having involved the economic collapse of Oujda, Melilla became in fact the only great commercial center of redistribution of all Moroccan North-East. The Riffian city of Nador (approximately 300 000 inhabitants according to very hesitant Moroccan statistics, undoubtedly makes of them more 500 000), jointed of Melilla, with its antiquated economic structures, can only sub-contract the economic activities of the tertiary sector of the Spanish enclave. This role dominating of Melilla is thus extremely different from that of its Spanish counterpart of the west, Ceuta. The Riffian North-West indeed has a true regional economic capital which is clean for him and which is not other than Tangier, Ceuta thus remains a secondary center although more known in France Melilla.
Melilla, a city in strong growth
According to the Spanish authorities, the town of Melilla would be a medium-sized city in the French direction of the term (72 000 inhabitants officially recorded by the local statistics). In fact, it is of public notoriety that the real population probably reaches the double of this figure if it is not well more still without it being materially possible to establish it using reliable criteria.
This very important differential can be explained by multiple reasons from which most obvious are resulting from the strong demographic pressure of surrounding Morocco where the attraction, not to say the mirage, of the European Community is used as magnet in an environment of the Tiers-Monde type in full evolution. Melilla thus counts a strong proportion of Moroccan residents (officially recorded or not). At all events, in spite of its very small surface (12 km ²), Melilla is not any more one medium-sized city, but is indeed on the way to become an important city. Its situation near the Moroccan industrial port of Blessed-Ansar and Nador makes it dominate a bicephalous urban surface of a few hundreds of thousands of inhabitants which orders a space of more than one million inhabitants. The true Hinterland is in fact much more significant. To apprehend the reality of Melilla, it is thus essential to consider it within a framework broader than that defined by its only political borders.
Economy
Since the independence of the Morocco in 1956, Melilla does not have any more access to the mines of iron of the Rif which made of it an important working city related to the iron and steel industry so much so that it carried the nickname of “Bilbao of the South”. These mines were closed besides shortly after their nationalization by the Moroccan State. Preserving its role of big city of Spanish garrison, Melilla converted its old industrial districts in the Sixties and seventies into balneal districts forming a dense sea front residential on the beach.
Economically, the city is supposed food of the tertiary sector where one notes the curious absence of an important tourist activity of mass which one would expect here; existing tourism being only of transit moving towards the Morocco or while leaving. By far, it is the public sector which is used here as economic engine (wage bill of the comparable civils servant and, the local central administrations and where dominate National defense, Education, the medico-social one and the public administrations). The commercial sector, transport and the banking environment dominate the private sector. In fact, Melilla lives under perfusion of budgetary headings resulting from Madrid and of Brussels and this situation largely makes think of that which exists in the French territories and departments of overseas.
Melilla thus seems to live very with the top of its average realities (public equipment is for example impressive within this very particular framework), but it appears to supplement its incomes by the dividends of its statute of Free port and an astonishing frenzy of real constructions openly speculative whose financial origins are sometimes obscure.
Role of the city in the diplomatic debates
All in all, the city plays in fact the part of a counter and an economic hopper of decompression between a Espace Schengen famous rich person and a Third world considered poor but here in the course of economic initial phase of takeoff. This data makes it possible to relativize the posted territorial claims in way recurring by the Moroccan administration.
The claims whose been the object the enclave of Melilla (as that of Ceuta) are very old and are agitated by two quite distinct elements. On the one hand, that of the apparatus of Moroccan State which uses it in its discrete negotiations relative to old the the Spanish Sahara annexed by Rabat since the Marche Verte by refusing the project of referendum suggested by UNO. The proposal by UNO of a referendum is indeed supported by the diplomacy of Madrid before the socialist party does not go up to the capacity, whereas Paris hardly seems to hold to with it to maintain with the Morocco its economic influence and policy by offering its support for the Morocco. Moreover Madrid and Rabat have important dispute on the fishing rights of the Atlantic coast since the end of the agreement of fishing between the European Union and the Morocco, owner with the Mauritania of one of the exclusive Economic Zones (ZEE) full of fish of the world, thanks to the Remontée water. The renegotiation of this agreement was of importance for Spain because it constitutes 80% of the European fishing fleet what amounts saying that agreement UE- Morocco is a business bilateral than another thing. Paris plays the chart of Rabat, Madrid then reproaching Paris for not making play European solidarity by leaving in fact the place to Korean on the Atlantic coasts. Spain indeed refused to transfer its catches on the Moroccan coasts for a control from size (the catches decreased by half in volume but also in the face of fish, ecosystem which cannot support this level of catches), but as because the Morocco wished as these catches be able to be transformed on these grounds to recover the margin of transformation. As for the role of Washington in the area, it is recent. Since the re-election of president Bush, the State Department reinforced its bonds with Rabat while choosing with Madrid for a policy already applied vis-a-vis the French diplomacy. The Spanish withdrawal of the Iraqi scene since the arrival of a Socialist government to the Palate of Moncloa is of course the essential cause. Since, the sovereign of the sherifs lets the Moroccan press affirm that Washington would not slow down the Moroccan claims on Ceuta and Melilla. Washington up to now never contradicted these rumors included recently in the local press of Melilla. In addition, and it is this aspect which is undoubtedly most worrying, since the emergence of a violent form of the islamist integrism inspired by the wahhabism, Melilla became with Ceuta a claim hidjadist treating these two towns of “inaccurate cancers and ground Christians of Islam”. It is true that today, this movement comes from there to assert Andalusia… The sales leaflet used by the wahabism does not have anything economic, history or social, but political: it is a question of launching fires everywhere, of making anxious the Westerners and of forcing with the expensive conflict of civilizations with Huntington. If the Muslim population with Melilla is traditionally moderate and not very sensitive to this type of propaganda (itself being defined by the wahhabism like “traitress in Islam”), it does not remain less true about it than she is worked by uncontrolled quarrelsome groups come from the Morocco, which confirms certain incidents in the mosques of the city where the Imams legalists are regularly physically made attack. In Melilla, the local public opinion, all confused cultures, seems tetanized vis-a-vis these incidents. As for the position of Madrid since the installation of a parliamentary democracy, it is very stable, with some alternatives near according to the political color of responsibility, even if these alternatives today are exaggeratedly enlarged by the local press, the municipality and the district council of Melilla (these political authorities being mainly PP at the present time). The local population moreover massively is very attached to its membership of the European Community which confers to him the Spanish supervision and from which it draws great benefit. Its economic standard of living is for example exceptionally high within the geographical framework which is it his. Lastly, the posted and undoubtedly very real will that have as well the current Zapatero government as that of Reduction to maintain good relationships seems to plead for maintains status quo handle and thus the permanence of a certain stability.
Administrative framework
Since the promulgation of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the State, the town of Melilla juridically constitutes a commune ( Municipio ) to which superimposes a territorial collectivity laying out, inside a very decentralized State, of a broad autonomy of management defined by its statute of Ciudad Autonoma which compares it to a Comunidad (the equivalent of a French area) as well as, for example, Catalonia or Asturies. The Central state is represented there by a Delegacion del Gobierno which would correspond to regional headquarters in France. This representation of the State checks the constitutional conformity of the local administrative acts and guard the upper hand on the kingly businesses (Currency, Défense, Intérieur…).
Melilla is represented with the Parliament of Madrid by a deputy sitting at the Lower House of the Cortes and two senators sitting at the Upper House. Integral part of the European Union, Melilla is however not included there in her tax space, thus escaping any VAT on the prices the consumer from the goods and the services. Since 1863, it is all the territory of the enclave which is a port-franc whereas formerly, it was limited to the rock supporting the citadel and its quays.
Sociology
The population, as for it, does not have anything homogeneous. It is rather about a collection of very differentiated communities which mix little.
The most important group (approximately 50% of the population) consists of elements of Iberian origin and catholic confession, itself subdivided in an element dominating of Andalusian origin and a secondary element of Catalan origin. In these two groups, the influence of the Catholic church is in vertiginous fall since the end of the pro-Franco era. Certain economic groups remain however influenced by the Opus Dei, in particular the maritime transport sector.
This Iberian element is politically active on the local plan and remains very marked by the pro-Franco episode. It is indeed in Melilla that military rising began by inaugurating the Spanish Civil war. The city was thus the first victim of the blood baths of nationalist repression as of the July 17th 1936 (thousand shot, five thousand prisoners and as many imprisoned in the concentration camps according to the last university research).
Always marked by these repressions operated by Moroccan troops of the Spanish colonial army (Regulares and the Legion), this population remained at the very least very being wary with respect to the Moslem element at the point to express in some of its sectors an undeniable xenophobia although publicly not acknowledged. There undoubtedly would be necessary it to seek one of the reasons of electoral success with Melilla of the conservative party (Popular party) and the relative weakness of the Spanish working Socialist party (PSOE). The business of the small island Persil which bruyamment opposed the old Aznar government to the government of Rabat made only accentuate this tendency.
Thus, contrary to the professions of faith for “yes” to the referendum with the European Constitution emitted by the Popular party on the Peninsula, its local instances remained very discrete on the subject, the local PSOE (, openly engaged to him for “yes”) showing even its rival to make countryside for the abstention. This attitude was specified at the time of the Spanish referendum on the question, underlining a demonstration protester and of fold of an electorate, for the moment quiet, disorientated by the evolutions of the local situation and which with its only electoral advantage the conservative party would exploit.
The Berber element (of Spanish nationality) sets up the second group numerically. It occupies a notable place in the small shop and certain sectors of the liberal professions. Only the oldest elements and best integrated take part in the local political life. However, the Moslem vast majority of Spanish nationality, socially disadvantaged, seems politically very passive, simply satisfied with the protection of its protected economic statute which its nationality confers to him.
The city still comprises an influential Jewish community sépharade integrated very well, it is socially, economically like politically very present. Within the Spanish framework, this community constitutes a remarkable characteristic.
Lastly, there exists a small Hindu community originating in Goa in India. It settled at the 16th century with Melilla, coming from Portugal. Its role is especially anecdotic.
The Berbères of Moroccan nationality which reside in great number at Melilla set up a group with share and rather rejected by all the other communities. Their presence “is however tolerated” to constitute a cheap and not very demanding labor. Moreover, thirty thousand Morrocans cross the border very legally the every day (purchases net of tax, legal work or with the black, trades more or less licit, etc) under the terms of an old agreement between Spain and the Morocco. It still should be noted that the Moroccan State maintains here, for its nationals, an Arab school source of conflicts with Madrid, the teachers detached by Rabat having received for order recently, on behalf of their administration, not to be made establish or renew their residence permits near the Spanish authorities.
The other foreigners are officially a few hundreds (French, Belgian, Dutch, Chinese, British and Canadian); they are generally tradesmen, academics detached with the antenna of higher education of Melilla which depends on the university of Grenade, if not of the pensioners. They are not very visible and without any influence on the local political life. Only France maintains a simple consular antenna good not very active, obviously very voluntarily on behalf of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and which concerns its consulate-general with Seville.
A territory asserted by Morocco
The town of Melilla is asserted by the kingdom of the Morocco just like Ceuta, the small island Persil, the small island of Alborán and mow Plazas of soberanía (places of sovereignty) . Benefitting from economic weakening and soldier whom the Morocco at the 15th century knew Spain occupied the city in 1497. This one belonged before to the kingdom of the Morocco since 789, year of the foundation of the first Moroccan kingdom by Idrîs I {{er}}.
Spanish sovereignty on Ceuta and Melilla is recognized neither by the African Union, neither by the Organization of the Islamic conference, neither by the Arab Ligue, nor by the organization of the Union of the Arab Maghreb, the Member States of these four organizations considering that Spain must decolonize these territories and to restore them in Morocco. Moreover Melilla does not profit from protection of NATO
The Spanish grounds in North Africa do not form however part of the territories to be decolonized according to the official list of UNO, with contrario of the the Western Sahara or of Gibraltar for example which them forms parts of them and thus are always on standby of a solution of decolonization.
A door of Europe
There is a very important pressure on behalf of the African emigrants who want to enter in Melilla, which belongs to the territory of the European Union. The border is made safe by double a 6 height meters end and turns of guet. In spite of that, refugees regularly manage to cross it illegally. September 28th, 2005, more than 800 clandestine took by storm this fence, and a hundred of them managed to penetrate on the Spanish territory, 6 were killed by shootings of the Civil guard.
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