28 Facts About Melilla

Melilla is an autonomous city of Spain located in north Africa.

Melilla is one of the special member state territories of the European Union.

Movements to and from the rest of the EU and Melilla are subject to specific rules, provided for inter alia in the Accession Agreement of Spain to the Schengen Convention.

Since Melilla was an active beekeeping location in the past, the name has been related to honey; this is tentatively backed up by two ancient coins featuring a bee as well as the inscriptions.

Melilla was initially jointly administered by the House of Medina Sidonia and the Crown, and a 1498 settlement forced the former to station a 700-men garrison in Melilla and forced the latter to provide the city with a number of maravedies and wheat fanegas.

Related searches

The Crown's interest in Melilla decreased during the reign of Charles V During the 16th century, soldiers stationed in Melilla were badly remunerated, leading to many desertions.

The economic opportunities created in Melilla henceforth favoured the installment of a Berber population.

Melilla began to suffer from this, to which the instability brought by revolts against Muley Abdel Aziz in the hinterland added, although after 1905 Sultan pretender El Rogui carried out a defusing policy in the area that favoured Spain.

The Spanish retreated to Melilla, leaving most of the protectorate under the control of the Republic of Rif.

Royal decree pursuing the creation of an ayuntamiento in Melilla was signed on 13 December 1918 but the regulation did not come into force, and thus the existing government body, the, remained in force.

In 1995, Melilla became an "autonomous city", as the Statute of Autonomy of Melilla was passed.

Melilla declared the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sacrifice, as an official public holiday from 2010 onward.

Melilla is located in the northwest of the African continent, on the shores of the Alboran Sea, a marginal sea of the Mediterranean, the latter's westernmost portion.

Melilla has a warm Mediterranean climate influenced by its proximity to the sea, rendering much cooler summers and more precipitation than inland areas deeper into Africa.

Melilla is the city in Spain with the highest proportion of postal voting; vote buying is widely reported to be a common practice in the poor neighborhoods of Melilla.

Melilla is subdivided into eight districts, which are further subdivided into neighbourhoods :.

Melilla was the NUTS2 region with the lowest GDP per capita in Spain.

Melilla is regularly connected to the Iberian peninsula by air and sea traffic and is economically connected to Morocco: most of its fruit and vegetables are imported across the border.

The port of Melilla offers several daily connections to Almeria and Malaga.

Melilla Airport offers daily flights to Almeria, Malaga and Madrid.

Accordingly, Melilla has the second most important concentration of Modernista works in Spain after Barcelona.

Melilla has been praised as an example of multiculturalism, being a small city in which one can find Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists represented.

The Spanish spoken in Melilla is similar to the Andalusian variety from Cadiz, whereas the Berber variant spoken in Melilla is the Riffian language common with the neighbouring Nador area.

Melilla Airport is serviced by Air Nostrum, flying to the Spanish cities of Malaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Palma de Mallorca, Granada, Badajoz, Sevilla and Almeria.

The Spanish position states that both Ceuta and Melilla are integral parts of Spain, and have been since the 16th century, centuries prior to Morocco's independence from France in 1956, whereas Gibraltar, being a British Overseas Territory, is not and never has been part of the United Kingdom.

Related searches

Melilla has been under Spanish rule for longer than cities in northern Spain such as Pamplona or Tudela, and was conquered roughly in the same period as the last Muslim cities of Southern Spain such as Granada, Malaga, Ronda or Almeria: Spain claims that the enclaves were established before the creation of the Kingdom of Morocco.

However Ceuta and Melilla are not under NATO protection since Article 6 of the treaty limits the coverage to Europe and North America and islands north of the Tropic of Cancer.

On 21 December 2020, following the affirmations of the Moroccan Prime Minister, Saadeddine Othmani, stating that Ceuta and Melilla "are Moroccan as the [Western] Sahara [is]", Spain urgently summoned the Moroccan Ambassador to convey that Spain expects respect from all its partners to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its country and asked for explanations about the words of Othmani.