Not really Morocco
Not really Morocco
My passport witnesses, to whom it may concern, that I recently spent a week in Morocco. This is true to the extent that I was stamped into, and out of, the tiny airport at Tetouan near the Mediterranean coast and spent 15 or 20 minutes, each way, transferring through developments and building sites that mirror the coastal development across the sea in Spain.
Otherwise I spent the week in what was in all but legal status an enclave of France- a ClubMed resort. French was the language, and probably over 90% of the customers were from Francophone Europe.
But the Northern coastal area of Morocco where ClubMed has staked out its bit of France was, for half of the C20 from 1912, a Spanish colony - or to give it its proper euphemistic name, Protectorate. It was a slice of North Africa conceded to Spain by a greater colonial power, France, which “protected “ the remainder of Morocco.
The Spanish Protectorate included two territories already claimed by Spain, Ceuta and Melilla; and the Rif mountains, whose inhabitants would cause a whole load of blood-soaked trouble. The Rif dominates the inland skyline.
Ceuta, notorious this year for a massive migrant invasion (the consequences of which are still unfolding) was originally a Portuguese conquest in the C15. (Iberian powers were nervous of the hostile Moorish powers on the opposite Mediterranean shore and sought to establish disruptive military bases.)
Portugal and its outpost were temporarily swallowed by Spain in the C17. Ceuta stayed in Spanish hands when Portugal regained independence, and so it remains, a short distance from the cultural French enclave of ClubMed .
The Spanish Protectorate, capital Tétouan, had a significant influence on modern Spanish history. The Rif tribesmen rebelled in the 1920s and in 1921 inflicted a gruesome massacre on Spanish forces - the Desastre de Annual, said to be the worst defeat suffered by the army in recent history. It contributed to the turmoil in Spanish politics that led to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in the 1920s.
There is more, perhaps more sinister, history. Franco made his name in the Protectorate as a competent army officer, rapidly promoted in the Army of North Africa. In the summer of 1936, the Nationalist coup against the Republican government was only partially successful . Reinforcements from the hardened African army, now commanded by Franco, were desperately needed. But the Spanish navy, largely loyal to the government, denied sea passage to Franco’s troops.
Franco appealed to Hitler and Mussolini . They sent transport planes- to Tetouan airport. The planes loaded up soldiers and their equipment and flew them to Sevilla and a decisive role in the Civil War.
Tetouan airport is therefore an infamous place, although no memorial exists to its part in Franco’s success.
And so to Club Yasmina, a bit of France that took over a spacious estate on the Moroccan coast in 1970. It is on a steep slope that falls away to flatness and a wide sandy beach. I wondered whether it was once a park or vast garden, Spanish or Moroccan, for it is very lush and green where spared by the brutalist buildings of ClubMed. They look somewhat like cellblocks, although containing spacious rooms, basically furnished.
ClubMeds run on a frantic timetable, accompanied most of the time by pounding music to urge on participation in the many activities.
Our party was there mainly to play tennis, and we players were rewarded with some decent coaching and time spent on the many clay courts- of uncertain bounce. which often frustrated our would-be brilliant shot making.
Towards the end of our stay many Moroccan families arrived for weekend stays. The contrast with the French and Belgians was interesting. The European women were in bikinis for the most part. Moroccan women wore flowing robes and hijabs; to swim the girls wore burkinis. The men and boys wore “normal” western poolside garb.
The gated and guarded ClubMed is no longer an anomaly on the coast. It is surrounded by holiday apartments, often in their own gated sites.
Such is Mediterranean coastal development .
Oct 2026
