Tarfaya ( - ''Ṭarfāya''; ) is a coastal Moroccan town, located at the level of

Cape Juby Cape Juby (, trans. ''Raʾs Juby'', ) is a cape on the coast of southern Morocco, near the border with Western Sahara, directly east of the Canary Islands. Its surrounding area, including the cities of Tarfaya and Tan-Tan, is called the C ...

, in western

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

, on the Atlantic coast. It is located about 890 km southwest of the capital

Rabat Rabat (, also , ; ) is the Capital (political), capital city of Morocco and the List of cities in Morocco, country's seventh-largest city with an urban population of approximately 580,000 (2014) and a metropolitan population of over 1.2 million. ...

, and around 100 km from

Laayoune Laayoune or El Aaiún (, Latn, ar, al-ʕuyūn , , ) is the largest city of the disputed territory of Western Sahara, with a population of 271,344 in 2023. The city is the ''de jure'' capital of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, though it ...

and

Lanzarote Lanzarote (, , ) is a Spanish island, the easternmost of the Canary Islands, off the north coast of Africa and from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering , Lanzarote is the fourth-largest of the islands in the archipelago. With 163,230 inhabi ...

, in the far east of the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, Autonomous Community of Spain. They are located in the northwest of Africa, with the closest point to the cont ...

. During the colonial era, Tarfaya was a Spanish colony known as Villa Bens. It was unified with

in 1958 after the

Ifni War The Ifni War, sometimes called the Forgotten War (''la Guerra Olvidada'') in Spain, was a series of armed incursions into Spanish West Africa by Morocco, Moroccan insurgents that began in November 1957 and culminated with the abortive siege ...

, which started one year after the independence of other regions of Morocco. Tarfaya is the capital and main town in the Tarfaya Province, and counts a population of 8,027 inhabitants according to the 2014 census. Although founded in the twentieth century, the city has a big historical symbolic in the Moroccan history, dating back to the era of the Green March in November 1975. The region of Tarfaya has been linked to relations with foreign powers, following several incursions conducted at its coasts (Spanish, Portuguese, British and French). This blending gave the city a special cultural dimension in its history. The famous French writer and aviator

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, vicomte de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (, , ), was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator. Born in Lyon to an French nobility, aristocratic ...

(1900-1944) lived in Tarfaya for two years (1927-1928) before writing his masterpiece

The Little Prince ''The Little Prince'' (, ) is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published po ...

that was later translated to more than 300 languages and dialects. He served as station manager here during his career as an

airmail Airmail (or air mail) is a mail transport service branded and sold on the basis of at least one leg of its journey being by air. Airmail items typically arrive more quickly than surface mail, and usually cost more to send. Airmail may be th ...

pilot. In 2004, the Antoine de Saint-Exupery Museum was opened in Tarfaya. Tarfaya is home to a number of economic projects, including the largest wind farm in Africa, called Tarfaya Wind Farm, and Casamar, also known as Port Victoria, that was founded by the Scottish trader and traveler Donald McKenzie in 1882. It is the meeting area of Atlantic coast with stretching sand dunes. Sebkha Tah, the lowest altitude point in

(55 meters below sea level) is located in Tarfaya province. Tarfaya is also the closest city to the Khenifiss National Park, added to the

UNESCO World Heritage World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an international treaty A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between sovereign states and/or international organizations that is governed by int ...

Tentative list, an ecological site home to hundreds of different kinds of migratory birds each year. It is estimated that more than 20,000 birds from 211 different species breed, nest and feed regularly in the park.

History

Tarfaya was occupied by the British in 1882, when they built a trading post called Casa del Mar. The building is currently in a state of complete disrepair. The Sahrawi tribes then solicited the intervention of

Sultan Sultan (; ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be use ...

Hassan I who negotiated the withdrawal of the British in 1895 by Treaty of Cape Juby. In 1912 the territory of Tarfaya, then named

, was part of the

Spanish Sahara Spanish Sahara (; ), officially the Spanish Possessions in the Sahara from 1884 to 1958, then Province of the Sahara between 1958 and 1976, was the name used for the modern territory of Western Sahara when it was occupied and ruled by Spain bet ...

. The greater Cape Juby region was unified with Morocco in 1958, at the end of the

. In December 2014 the Tarfaya Wind Farm, the largest wind farm in Africa, was commissioned.

Aéropostale

Tarfaya's association with Aéropostale began in 1927. The airmail carrier, based in

Toulouse, France Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

, was founded by French industrialist Pierre-Georges Latécoère, who envisioned an air route connecting France to its French colonies in Africa. Latécoère firmly believed in the future of aviation as a means of commercial transportation and communication between people. The nearby Cape Juby airfield was an important refueling and stopover station for Aéropostale. Author-aviator

was named its station manager in 1927. There he remained for 18 months, on occasion negotiating with the rebellious Moorish tribes to release the imprisoned pilots, as he wrote in his first novel, Southern Mail. On 28 September 2004 a

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

opened in honour of the memory of Aéropostale, Saint-Exupéry and its pilots, as an initiative of the “Friends of Tarfaya Association”supported notably by the city of Toulouse and European aircraft maker

Airbus Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...

. The museum was inaugurated by renowned aviation journalist Bernard Chabbert, whose father was also part of Aéropostale's history.

Air services

The town maintains the Tarfaya Airport with the

IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is an airline trade association founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff conferences tha ...

code TFY.

Climate

Tarfaya has a

desert climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk'') is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

( BWh/ BWk).

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * Didier Daurat
''Saint-Exupéry tel que je l'ai connu''
France: Édition Dynamo, 1954. {{Authority control Populated places in Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra 1882 establishments in the British Empire

Tarfaya Tarfaya ( - ''Ṭarfāya''; ) is a coastal Moroccan town, located at the level of Cape Juby, in western Morocco, on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. It is located about 890 km southwest of the capital Rabat, and around 100 km from La ...