Local overview
Melilla is an autonomous city of Spain on the North African coast. It lies on the eastern side of the Cape Three Forks, on the Morocco–Spain border, adjacent to the Moroccan port town of Beni Ansar, and faces the Mediterranean Sea. It has an area of 14.24 km2 (5.50 sq mi).
The trading outpost of Rusadir was established on the current site by seafaring Phoenicians. Passed over among several powers during Antiquity and the middle ages, the place was forsaken amid strife between the Kingdoms of Fez and Tlemcen, and it was seized by Christians in 1497, constituting a condominium between the House of Medina Sidonia and the Crown of Castile until 1556. Integrated in the Hispanic Monarchy, the fortress of Melilla la Vieja remained a military praesidium with limited civilian population for much of the early modern period. After the expansion of Melilla's perimeter to its current limits in the wake of the Treaty of Wad Ras (1860), the area in between Melilla la Vieja and the outer forts was urbanised and populated by mainland Spaniards, Sephardi Jews and Riffians, and the local economy thrived from the mining (iron ore) operations in the eastern Rif. Prior to the passing of its Statute of Autonomy in 1995, Melilla was a regular municipality of the province of Málaga.
Melilla is one of the special territories of the member states of the European Union. Movements to and from the rest of the EU and Melilla are subject to specific rules, provided for in the Accession Agreement of Spain to the Schengen Convention. It has a small airport and its port is connnected to the ports of Málaga, Motril, and Almería via ferry. There are also small numbers of Sephardic Jews and Sindhi Hindus. Melilla features a diglossia between the official Spanish and Tarifit. Like the autonomous city of Ceuta and Spain's other territories along the northern African coast, Melilla is subject to an irredentist claim by Morocco.
