The world is full of exclaves, odd little slices of land that are cut off from their motherland.…
Times visited: 1 (2 days in Melilla and 1 day in Ceuta in 2019)
Cities visited: Melilla and Ceuta
Spain has two rather unknown exclaves in North Africa, the cities of Melilla and Ceuta. I visited both during my journey through Southern Europe in the summer of 2019.
I travelled to Melilla first after spending the day in Málaga, the sheer opposite of Melilla. In the dead of night, I sailed across the same ocean that hundreds of immigrants attempt to cross every day, sometimes succeeding, sometimes drowning. I’ve never felt the privilege I was born into as much as I did at that very moment.
Melilla has a bad reputation and has even been dubbed ‘Europe’s Dirty Secret’ due to the rough handling of the people who have attempted to smuggle themselves across the razor wire border fence designed to keep people in need out of Europe. Some might question why I was even going to a city like Melilla in the first place, but I travel to learn and there’s no better way of understanding the world than seeing it for yourself.
Melilla was an eye-opening experience. I came there to see the fence for myself and to learn about the immigrant crisis, but I also got a lot more out of my visit. I got to know a unique city that made me feel like I was getting an introduction to Morocco. I talked to locals about their unusual home and many were curious to know why I had chosen to come there. But Melilla is as beautiful as it’s perplexing and it – very unexpectedly – stole my heart completely.
While I spent two days in Melilla, I only went to Ceuta on a day trip as it’s much closer to the Spanish mainland (a 1-hour ferry ride from Algeciras whereas Melilla takes 7 hours to reach).
I hoped Ceuta would blow me away like Melilla did, but I didn’t quite get the same feeling in Ceuta. Despite the political similarities, the differences between Melilla and Ceuta were obvious from the get-go. Arriving in Ceuta was like arriving in any other Spanish port city. There was no border control like there was in Melilla and in terms of architecture and lifestyle, it seems that Ceuta’s cultural ties with Spain are stronger, whereas Melilla felt like a mix of Spanish and Moroccan culture.
Despite this, I did have a lovely day in Ceuta, where the hike to a fortress on the summit of a mountain was the highlight. It was also lovely to explore the city as one of few tourists, something that’s incredibly rare in the summer time in Spain!
