Tangier

Tangier is among the oldest cities in Morocco. Phoenician traders settled the site, and under Rome it became Tingis, capital of the province of Mauretania Tingitana that was named after it. Vandals, Byzantines and then the armies of the Muslim conquest passed through; in 711 the force that crossed into Spain under Tariq ibn Ziyad set out from this shore, and for centuries afterwards the town looked as much to al-Andalus as to the Moroccan interior.

Portugal took Tangier in 1471 and held it until 1661, when it passed to England as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry. The English built a mole to make a harbour, found the place expensive to defend and abandoned it in 1684, blowing up their works as they left; Sultan Moulay Ismail's forces took it back. Through the 19th century the city became the diplomatic capital of Morocco, where European powers kept their legations while the sultans ruled from Fez and Marrakesh — among them the United States, whose legation building was a gift from the sultan in 1821.

In 1912 the protectorate treaties left Tangier out of both the French and Spanish zones, and from 1925 it was governed as an international zone by several powers until independence in 1956. Currency was unregulated, censorship light and residence easy, and the city filled with banks, smugglers, spies and writers. The years after independence were lean: business left for Casablanca, and the state neglected the north for decades. Since the 2000s the opening of the Tanger Med port, car factories nearby, a rebuilt city port and the high-speed railway have made Tangier one of Morocco's fastest-growing cities.

The international decades left the strongest cultural mark. Paul Bowles, an American composer and novelist, lived here for more than half a century, recorded Moroccan music and translated Tangier storytellers; William S. Burroughs wrote much of Naked Lunch in the city; Jean Genet, Tennessee Williams and the Beat writers all passed through, and Matisse painted Tangier in 1912 and 1913. Cafés rather than galleries carried that life, and several of them still trade on it.

The everyday culture is northern Moroccan. Spanish is widely understood, Spanish television and football are followed, and Spanish words run through the local Arabic. Jbala people from the hills south of the city bring their music, dress and produce to its markets, and Andalusian classical music is performed at concerts and weddings. The city is Muslim and reasonably conservative, with Friday prayers and Ramadan shaping the week and the year, but it has long been used to foreigners and is easier about dress and mixed company than the villages of the Rif.

Tangier's writers, painters and musicians are now joined by film festivals, galleries in the medina and a large student population. Football is followed passionately, the promenade along the bay is a nightly ritual, and mint tea and strong coffee are drunk at length in public — the café, not the home, is where much of the city's social life happens.

Tangier had about 850,000 inhabitants in 2014, and the wider prefecture is larger still; it has grown very fast since the 1990s as workers arrived from the Rif and from across Morocco. New districts of apartment blocks have spread south and east towards the industrial zones, while the medina has partly emptied of families and filled with guesthouses. The port that once handled ferries has been rebuilt for cruise ships and yachts.

The economy now rests on manufacturing and logistics as much as on trade and tourism. Tanger Med and the free zones around it, a large car plant and factories making wiring, textiles and aircraft parts employ tens of thousands, many of them women commuting by works bus. Tourism, fishing and construction fill much of the rest. Wages are low by European standards, housing costs have risen sharply, and informal work is common.

Days begin early and end late. Cafés open at dawn for coffee and bissara, offices and shops break in the afternoon, and evenings belong to the seafront and the squares. Emigration is a constant subject: many families have relatives in Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands who return each summer by ferry, and the strait is also the most visible point of irregular migration towards Europe, with its risks and its policing part of daily conversation.

Tangier eats from the sea. Sardines grilled over charcoal are the everyday fish, with sole, sea bass, squid and prawns at the port grills, and fish tagines cooked with potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and the herb-and-garlic marinade called chermoula. Fried fish sold in paper is a standard cheap lunch, and the markets sell shrimp by the cupful.

The cheap breakfast of the north is bissara, a thick purée of dried fava beans poured into a bowl, dressed with olive oil, cumin and paprika and eaten with bread. The city's own street food is kalinti, a soft baked tart of chickpea flour and oil sold hot by the slice from small counters, close kin to the calentita of Gibraltar and the farinata of Genoa. Spanish habits survive elsewhere too, in fried churros dipped in coffee and in the tapas-like plates put out in some bars.

Sweets are almond-heavy — ghriba biscuits, kaab el ghzal shaped like crescents, and chebakia fried in honey and sesame during Ramadan. Mint tea is poured from a height at every occasion, but Tangier is also a coffee city, drinking it black and strong or as nous-nous, half coffee and half milk. Fresh orange juice is sold from carts at the Grand Socco, and figs, prickly pears and mountain cheese come in from the Jbala hills in season.