Dakhla

The peninsula was known to Europeans long before the town existed: Portuguese navigators rounded the peninsula in 1436 and named the inlet Rio do Ouro, the river of gold, in the mistaken belief that it was the mouth of a gold-bearing river; the Spanish form is Río de Oro. Spain claimed the coast in 1884 and built a trading and military post on the peninsula, naming it Villa Cisneros. It became the main Spanish base on the southern part of the coast, with a fort, a church and a small garrison supplied by sea, and in the 1920s it served as a way-station for the Toulouse–Dakar airmail service.

The Spanish colony ended in 1975. Mauritania administered the southern part of the territory for a few years and withdrew in 1979, after which Morocco took over the area and has administered it since; the Polisario Front, which had declared a Sahrawi republic, fought a war that ran until the United Nations ceasefire of 1991. Renamed Dakhla under Mauritanian administration in 1976, the town grew steadily under Moroccan investment, above all around its harbour, as this coast holds some of the richest fishing grounds in the world.

Tourism arrived late and from an unexpected direction. Windsurfers and then kitesurfers found that the lagoon behind the peninsula combined flat, shallow water with reliable trade wind, and in recent decades camps appeared along the bay. A programme of Moroccan investment has since added roads and hotels, and as of 2024 a large new Atlantic port was being built. The political status of the territory remains unresolved, and a low-level armed confrontation resumed along the sand berm, far inland, in November 2020.

Dakhla's culture is Sahrawi first: Hassaniya Arabic is the everyday language of many families, poetry and sung verse are valued, and the tea ceremony — three small glasses of sweet green tea, poured from a height to raise the foam, drunk slowly and never in a hurry — frames conversation, business and idleness alike. The melhfa, a long piece of bright printed cloth, is the everyday dress of many women and the most visible marker of Sahrawi identity on the street. Desert hospitality is taken as an obligation: a visitor is fed and given tea.

Layered over this is the Moroccan public culture brought south over the past five decades by families arriving for work in fishing and administration, with Moroccan Arabic widely spoken beside Hassaniya, French on official signs and Spanish surviving among older residents. Moroccan national holidays set the calendar, and Ramadan reorders the day for almost everyone.

The newest layer is the international wind-sports crowd, seasonal and mostly confined to the camps along the bay, which has given the town a small foreign economy of instructors, cooks and drivers. The mix stays polite rather than blended: beachwear is normal on the water and out of place in the town, alcohol is not part of public life, and politics is discussed guardedly with strangers. Fishing families, desert families and visitors share a small place without much overlapping.

Dakhla has a population of about 160,000, spread along the last few kilometres of the peninsula. Fishing dominates everything: the fleet, the processing and freezing plants, the ice works and the lorries that run the catch north to Morocco. Public administration, a growing tourism sector built on the lagoon, greenhouse agriculture on the mainland and the building of the new port account for most of the remaining work.

The day follows the wind and the heat. Boats go out early, the market handles the catch in the morning, the middle of the day is slow, and the promenade and the cafés fill in the evening when the air cools. Most residents live in low concrete housing in the centre and the districts near the port; the camps along the bay operate as a separate world, reached by a road with almost nothing on it.

Water and distance are the constant constraints. Fresh water is scarce, and supplies of most goods arrive by lorry over a thousand kilometres of desert highway. Growth has been fast enough to strain housing and services, and the unresolved status of the territory shows in the checkpoints on the road and the caution of public talk.

Dakhla eats from the Atlantic. The cold, nutrient-rich current that chills the coast also makes it one of the world's richest fishing grounds, and the town's kitchens work through sardines, mackerel, sea bream, sole and octopus, which is grilled, stewed with tomato and garlic, or served cold in salad. Fish is generally cooked simply: charcoal grilling, or a light flour coating and a hot pan, with cumin, salt, bread and a chopped tomato and onion salad alongside.

Oysters are the town's speciality and its surprise. Grown by hand on beds in the shallow, plankton-heavy lagoon, they are sold in the town and eaten raw with lemon, an unlikely product of a desert coast, and some now go to restaurants in Marrakesh, Casablanca and Europe.

The rest of the table is Sahrawi and southern Moroccan. Camel meat is eaten, stewed or grilled; méchoui, a whole roast lamb or goat, marks celebrations; couscous appears on Fridays; tagines of chicken with preserved lemon or of lamb with prunes are everyday restaurant food; and harira soup breaks the fast during Ramadan. Bread accompanies everything and often replaces cutlery. Tea closes every meal and most encounters — three glasses, heavily sugared, poured in sequence, with the sugar sold in the market as hard cones wrapped in blue paper.