Agadir

Agadir takes its name from the Amazigh word for a fortified granary, and the site was a minor anchorage until the Portuguese built the fort of Santa Cruz do Cabo de Gué on the shore in 1505. The Saadians, rising in the Souss and the Drâa, took it in 1541 and made it a port for the sugar and saltpetre of the valley behind. The Saadians had seized the hill above the fort in 1540, and a fortress was built on its summit later in the century. For two centuries the trade of the south passed through the bay, until the sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah turned it away from 1760 in favour of Essaouira, which he was building to the north.

The town revived under the French protectorate, when a modern harbour was cut, the sardine fleet grew and the first hotels appeared along the bay. On the night of 29 February 1960 an earthquake of magnitude 5.8, shallow enough to shake the surface violently, destroyed almost the whole town in about fifteen seconds. Between 12,000 and 15,000 people were killed, about a third of the population, and in the old Talborjt quarter nine buildings in ten were destroyed or badly damaged.

Reconstruction moved the city about 1.6 km further south and built it to mandatory seismic standards, in the modernist architecture of the early 1960s — wide boulevards, low concrete blocks and separate zones for hotels, housing, industry and administration — by architects including Jean-François Zevaco and Elie Azagury, with Le Corbusier consulted. The fishing port and the canning factories grew alongside the beach hotels; Agadir was the world's leading sardine port in the 1980s, and it is now Morocco's leading seaside resort and the economic centre of the Souss.

This is a Chleuh city — the Tashelhit-speaking Amazigh of the Souss and the Anti-Atlas — and their language is heard in the market, in taxis and on local radio far more than in northern Moroccan cities. The tradition of the rwais, the travelling Amazigh poet-singers who accompany themselves on the ribab and the lotar, is rooted in this region, and the village ahwach, a line dance of drums and massed voices, still appears at weddings and festivals. The Timitar festival each July turns that heritage into a large open-air event on the city's squares.

Because almost nothing survived 1960, Agadir has no medina in the usual Moroccan sense and little visible age; its identity is instead built on the sea, on the Soussi reputation for trade and thrift, and on a mixed population drawn from the mountains and oases of the whole south. The craft village built on the southern edge of the city was an attempt to give that missing old town a substitute.

Customs are those of Morocco generally, kept a little more lightly in the hotel zone than elsewhere. Friday is the day of the couscous meal and the midday prayer; Ramadan slows the daytime and fills the evenings; football is followed passionately, and the local club Hassania Agadir draws a loyal support. Visitors are expected to dress modestly away from the beach, to greet before asking, and to accept mint tea when it is offered.

The commune of Agadir recorded 504,768 people at the 2024 census, and greater Agadir, counting Inezgane, Aït Melloul, Dcheira and the other neighbouring communes, well over 1.2 million — the urban core of the Souss-Massa region. Growth has been rapid, fed by migration from the Anti-Atlas and the oases, and the built-up area now runs several kilometres inland from the bay.

The economy stands on three legs. Tourism fills the seafront hotels, mostly with European visitors in winter and Moroccans in summer. The port is the country's most important fishing harbour and the centre of a sardine canning and fish-processing industry. Inland, the Souss plain under its plastic greenhouses supplies much of Europe's winter tomatoes and citrus, and the packing houses, transport firms and seasonal labour that go with it shape the towns around the city. Groundwater depletion and repeated drought are the region's central worry, and seawater desalination, contracted for Agadir in 2014, is part of the answer.

Daily rhythm follows the heat only loosely here, because the coast stays temperate: shops open early, close for a long midday break and stay busy into the evening, when families walk the corniche. Housing costs in the beach quarters are high by Moroccan standards, so most residents live in the inland districts and commute by bus, shared taxi or moped.

The port sets the tone. Sardines, landed at what was the world's leading sardine port in the 1980s, are grilled whole over charcoal and eaten with bread, tomato salad and cumin, along with sole, sea bream, prawns and squid taken from the ice at the front of the stall. Fried fish sold in paper, and fish tagine with peppers, potato and a chermoula marinade of coriander, garlic, cumin and lemon, are the everyday coastal dishes.

The Souss is argan country, and Agadir is where its products are sold: cooking oil pressed from the tree's kernels, and amlou, a thick spread of argan oil, roasted almonds and honey eaten at breakfast with bread. Tagines here often use goat or lamb with seasonal vegetables; couscous, usually of barley in the south, is the Friday dish. Breakfast means harsha, a semolina griddle cake, or flaky msemen with honey and olive oil, and harira soup returns every evening in Ramadan.

Souk El Had is the place where all of it is bought, from spices and preserved lemons to Souss honey and dates brought over from the Tafilalet. Mint tea, poured from a height into small glasses, punctuates the day, and freshly pressed orange juice — the Souss grows the oranges — is sold on nearly every corner. Alcohol is available in hotels and licensed restaurants but is not part of ordinary café life.