Bougara is a town in the

Mitidja Mitidja, (Arabic: ) is a plain stretching along the outskirts of Algiers in northern Algeria. It is about long, with a width of . Traditionally devoted largely to agriculture and serving as the breadbasket of Algiers, the area has in recent decad ...

plain in

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

, about 20 kilometers due south of

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

. Located on the N29, the main road between

Blida Blida () is a city in Algeria. It is the capital of Blida Province, and it is located about 45 km south-west of Algiers, the national capital. The name ''Blida'', i.e. ''bulaydah'', is a diminutive of the Arabic word ''belda'', city. Ge ...

and Larbaâ, it is the capital of Bougara District, in

Blida Province Blida () is a province (''wilaya'') in Algeria. Its capital is Blida. The Chréa National Park is situated here. History The province was created from parts of Alger (department) and El Asnam department in 1974. In 1984 Tipaza Province was c ...

. In 1998 it had a population of 34,100. Previously, under French rule, it was called ''Rovigo''; it can be found with this name o
this excerpt
from the 1962 Michelin map of Algeria. The French name was chosen to honour the Duc de Rovigo who was commander-in-chief of the French army in Algeria from December 1831 to April 1833, when he was recalled due to the overtly violent nature of his repressive regime. Post cards of the town under French rule can be see
here
There are the saline thermal springs at Hammam-Mélouane, eight kilometers south-west of the town. An old postcard showing the baths complex can be see
here
British Army troops were billeted on French-owned farms outside Bougara in the autumn of 1943. In 1946, the

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

, the pre-state Zionist military, had a training camp near Bougara. On June 4, 1957 Someone, president of the délégation spéciale or mayor of Bougara, was arrested in the town by the

DST Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time, daylight time (United States and Canada), or summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks to make better use of the long ...

for collusion with the FLN. Famous people who were born in Bougara include two liberal pied noir writers,

Jules Roy Jules Roy (22 October 1907 – 15 June 2000) was a French writer. "Prolific and polemical" Roy, born an Algerian pied noir and sent to a Roman Catholic seminary, used his experiences in the French colony and during his service in the Royal Air F ...

(born there in 1907) and

Jean Pélégri Jean Pélégri (20 June 1920 – 24 September 2003) was a writer and professor of literature. Of French descent, he was born in Algeria, but left as part of the diaspora of French colonists referred to as ''pieds-noirs'' following the Algerian Wa ...

(born there in 1920). The grave of Roy's mother is at the village of Sidi Moussa, about eight kilometres north of Bougara, which is where Roy was reared, on his maternal grandparents' farm.

References

Populated places in Blida Province Blida Province {{Blida-geo-stub