Oran

Oran was founded in 902 by Andalusian merchants who wanted a port facing Spain, and it grew as the outlet for the grain and wool of the western plains. Spain captured the city in 1509 and held it, with a short Ottoman interruption in the 1700s, until 1792, building the forts that still ring the bay — Santa Cruz above the town, Saint-Philippe and the works around Mers El Kébir. A severe earthquake in 1790 wrecked much of the city and hastened the Spanish departure. Oran then became the seat of the western beylik of the Regency of Algiers, whose beys had previously governed from Mascara.

French forces took the city in 1831. Colonial Oran grew quickly and unusually: much of its European population came from Spain rather than France, and by the 20th century it was a busy port and commercial centre with a large Jewish community as well, laid out in boulevards, squares and an opera house. Albert Camus set his novel The Plague here in the 1940s.

The war of independence was fought hard in the city and its region. Independence in July 1962 was followed by violence in Oran and by the departure of almost the entire European population within a few months, which emptied whole districts. The city was repopulated from the countryside and rebuilt as an industrial and university centre, with gas and petrochemical plants at Arzew nearby. Since the 1980s it has been best known abroad as the city where raï music grew from cabarets and wedding bands into an international style.

Raï is Oran's great export. It grew out of the sung poetry of the western plains and the bars of the city and its region, was carried through the 1970s and 1980s by singers such as Cheikha Rimitti, Cheb Khaled and Cheb Hasni, and became one of the few Arabic-language popular musics with a global audience; UNESCO added raï to its intangible heritage lists in 2022. Weddings, cafés and car stereos keep it playing constantly, alongside Algerian rap and the older wahrani style.

The city's temperament is regarded across Algeria as relaxed and quick-witted, with a dialect full of Spanish and French words. Its Spanish inheritance shows in food, vocabulary and architecture as much as in the forts, and the French-era centre gives it a Mediterranean feel closer to Alicante or Marseille than to the Algerian interior. The Christian and Jewish communities that once lived here left in 1962, but their buildings remain in use for other purposes.

Football is followed intensely, above all MC Oran, and matches shape the mood of a weekend. Everyday manners are Algerian: long greetings, coffee or tea before business, insistent hospitality and a clear distinction between public and family life. Ramadan changes the whole rhythm of the city, and summer evenings on the seafront are a social institution.

The city counted about 803,000 people at the 2008 census and the wider metropolitan area around 1.5 million, making this the largest urban area in western Algeria. The port, the petrochemical and gas complex at Arzew, food and construction industries, several universities and a large service and trade sector provide the work, and Medina Jdida's wholesale trade supplies shops far inland.

Most people live in apartments: French-era blocks in the centre, 1970s estates, and the large new housing programmes that have pushed the city east towards Bir El Djir and south towards Es Sénia. Rents and property prices in the centre and along the coast are high by Algerian standards, and young couples often wait years for housing. The tram, opened in the 2010s, has made commuting easier, but traffic remains heavy.

The day begins early, offices and shops close through the middle of the afternoon in summer, and the streets refill in the evening, when the seafront and the squares are crowded. Unemployment among the young, emigration towards Spain and France, water supply in dry summers and the cost of imported goods are the recurring concerns, discussed at length in the cafés.

Oran's own street food is karantika, also called garantita: a batter of chickpea flour and water baked until it sets into a soft golden flan, cut into squares, brushed with harissa and dusted with cumin, and often eaten inside half a baguette. Its name is usually traced to the Spanish period, and it is sold from small shops and handcarts all over the city.

Fish dominates the rest. Sardines are grilled over charcoal or stuffed and fried; bream, red mullet and prawns come from Béni Saf and Arzew; and rice cooked with seafood shows the Spanish influence that runs through the whole of the west. Soups are important, including harira with lentils and chickpeas, and couscous with lamb and vegetables remains the Friday dish. Merguez, brochettes and sandwiches loaded with chips and salad are the common quick meals.

Pastry shops sell almond sweets, griwech dipped in honey, makroud of semolina and dates, and, in Ramadan, trays of syrup-soaked qalb el louz, alongside French cakes and good bread left over from the colonial period. Mint tea and short strong coffee accompany everything. The hills inland around Mascara have long produced wine, though most people here do not drink it, and fresh orange juice and mineral water are the usual accompaniments to a meal.