Melilla is a Spanish Autonomous City located in Morocco, North Africa. We travelled there to visit Manny's family who have lived in Melilla for several generations. I had always wanted to travel by ferry, something romantic about arrival by ship and especially crossing the Mediterranean. Melilla is a military outpost and has a fortified border fence around the perimeter which I saw on our previous visit. You also see the presence of uniformed personnel in the streets and because we arrived on Friday afternoon, waiting to board the ferry, amongst them was a member of the Legion wearing his beret with feathers pointing up to the sky. I wasn't brave enough to take a photo. Apart from the military presence, Melilla prides itself on the harmonious blending of four cultures and religious tolerance. It has a large Moroccan community and smaller Jewish and Hindu groups who have lived in Melilla for a very long time. We didn't have time to find the Indian restaurants unfortunately, we were hanging out for a curry but the cuisine of Melilla has been influenced by the cultural blend and it makes for interesting food in the restaurants. Another pleasure is to drink Moroccan tea, fresh mint immersed in boiling water and a ridiculous amount of sugar. Really delicious but next time I'll ask to put the sugar in myself. Because we didn't have a plan and hadn't booked accommodation in advance we found a lot of Hotels were full. We were limited in our choice but found a room at the Hotel Rusadir. Advertised as 4 star but probably 2.5 would be more accurate. Accommodation is relatively expensive because the rates of pay in Melilla are higher and goods often tax free. Anyhow we were only after a bed for the night, our days were fairly busy. The location was very handy to the city centre and the harbour for the ferry. When not catching up with Manny's huge and very welcoming family we visited the Melilla La Viaje )the Fort), the Museo de Arqueologiá e Historia de Melilla and walked the length of the esplanade to the border with the Moroccan harbour area. Museo de Arqueologiá e Historia de Melilla: entry to this very good Museum is free which was a surprise. It is so good that an entrance fee would be acceptable. There isn't much English in the displays, at the entrance they had booklets in other languages but had run out of the English version. The staff just shrugged when Manny asked, a bit disappointing but the Director of Language and Cultural Affairs managed to translate the most important stuff. The importance of the visit to the Museum for me is that it gave me context for Melilla's existence. I'd always been uncomfortable in Melilla and felt a little besieged by greater Africa around the enclave. I couldn't understand why Spain would bother. But when you see the history of the region, Melilla has been an important trade portal for millennia. The city has rarely administrated itself being held by Carthage, Rome, the Moors, briefly the Berbers and then Catholic Kings of Spain. The Arabs developed a very effective and clever system of collecting and storing water which I'm sure made the city viable in such an arid region. The cisterns used to store water have been restored after being used to house animals earlier in the 20th century. In Spain there are many more beggars than we are accustomed to seeing, mostly they don't approach you but stand near entrances or sit on the pavements holding pieces of cardboard with words describing their plight. In Melilla it is different, youths in their late teens approached us asking for bread or food with sad, beseeching looks on their faces. Our first experience of this was shortly after arrival in the port. We went to a bar we fondly remembered from our last visit and sat outside in the sun. Two young men came up to us, one of them asking for bread. We only had a tapa of olives on the table. Manny spoke to him & offered him the olives. I then noticed his friend had circled around the behind us. Manny didn't realise till I told him afterwards. Luckily we both have a habit of sitting with handbags (all valuables inside) in our laps. Our backpacks too heavy for a quick getaway. We asked the family about it later that day and they confirmed that you have to be careful. It has been known for gold jewellery to be pulled off people. Good job peregrinos don't carry much! I've read since our visit, that after Barcelona, Melilla has the largest number of Modernist buildings. I went a bit crazy trying to capture good photos of them in the limited time we had. I wondered why there were so many and once again the 'Museo de Arqueologiá e Historia de Melilla' came to the rescue. The Jewish display explains that the Architect Enrique Neito was employed to design the buildings and the construction funded by the Jewish community.
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AuthorMy interests are photography and family history research. And I like to cycle and travel. We are walking the Archives
May 2019
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