2nd October 2024

Ginevra Montefusco

The port of Tanger MED and its free zone are hubs of production and attraction for international investors. Investment flows trigger a great expansion of the urban space and the urbanisation of rural areas historically dedicated to traditional indigenous agriculture, such as that of the Jbela women. The peri-urban area of Tangier, which has been fragmented in industrial and free zones, is the node where fishing and farming flows meet. The Rue des deux mérs, an artery connecting the Mediterranean shore, the city and the Atlantic shore, is traversed daily by both large trucks transporting containers to the industrial zone and small producers (artisanal fishermen and small farmers) transporting goods to the city. This area is symbolic in the process of foreign market orientation, the damage to local food sovereignty, the exploitation of resources and the negative impact on local producing communities. This place also opens up a fundamental theme, that of mobility. All local food arrives with the movement of people from coastal and rural areas around Tangier (until a few years ago, also from Ceuta, access to which is now restricted to Schengen passports). The movement of food (and the specific groups of people who transport it) not only has a strong impact on the experience of eating in the city, but also on the construction and naming of the city itself. One of the main gates of the medina, Bab l'Fas, is so called because it was the gate (bab) to the medina for those, especially the Jbela women, who came with their mules from the rural areas of the east (Fas) to bring agricultural produce to the city. Now how these women move from rural areas to the city has changed, but mobility is still a major issue: both in moving within the city to find spaces where they are not challenged (as they do not have their own stalls at the market), and in traveling to the city, which is still difficult and dependent on poor public transport. One way to control the flow of these women has been to create small stations with canopies on the road from the villages to Tangier, so that they can sell directly from the road. Mobility is not only about products from within the region, but also about the flow of food, which colonial perhaps, as well as globalisation, have driven. This has generated some interesting ‘mestizos’, including Tangerine tacos, one of the most popular street foods. Tourism, another driver of flows and mobility, is helping to shape food products, food spaces, as well as the city in general. The forecast of large tourist flows in 2030, the year of the World Cup, which will also take place in Tangier, is making the city invest heavily in infrastructure, both for hospitality and roads. One action being planned is the construction of a high-traffic road on the coast east of Merkala, one of the city's emblematic beaches for artisanal fishing. Mobility is an interesting perspective to approach the perspectives of small-scale producers, the trajectories of products, and the relationships between food and space.