The Political and Cultural Geography of the “Distant Other”
Crossing the Border: Travel & Tourism Challenges for Ceuta, a Eurafrican Pene-Exclave
A little bit of Spain in North Africa is more remote than it looks.
INTERNATIONAL tourism is heavily dependent on both the cultural geography and the political geography of a destination.
Culture and politics together are the foundation of most people’s perceptions of other countries. How tourists perceive these is an important part of their decision to visit or not.
Exclaves are areas of land that are completely separated from the country they belong to by another country. There are many exclaves, both small and large, throughout the world. Most face no access issues because the home country and the surrounding country are on friendly terms. But sometimes access problems (and even wars!) can result.
A Piece of Spain in North Africa: Ceuta
Ceuta, is a Spanish exclave in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa that is surrounded by Morocco and the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the 18 autonomous communities of Spain and is located 71km (44mi) from the mainland of Spain, across the Strait of Gibraltar. It is technically a “ pene-exclave” because it is like a peninsula that can be accessed by sea from Spain, but not by land.
Other autonomous communities of Spain include the Balearic Islands (in the Mediterranean Sea), the Canary Islands (in the Atlantic Ocean, off Africa), and Melilla (another pene-exclave on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco). The Spanish government has programs to boost growth of its autonomous communities and they are entitled to national and European funds like any other remote European Union region.
For example, EU funds to Ceuta from 2014 to 2020 were aimed at improving the quality of life in the city and reducing the differences in social and economic welfare caused by its geographic disconnect from Spain. To do this, one third of Ceuta’s budget supports transportation connections to Spain.
Geopolitics
Ceuta has been under Spanish rule since about the 1600s, after being controlled by Portugal for some 200 years due to its strategic location at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.
The presence of Ceuta (along with Melilla) is a major source of long standing geopolitical tensions between Spain and Morocco. Over the past decade it has also been used as a gateway by North Africans seeking illegal entry into the European Union.
The Moroccans would prefer that these territories were part of their state. They also see them as a source for the illegal smuggling of European goods into Morocco. The COVID-19 pandemic has made matters worse, with Morocco completely closing the border crossings to both Ceuta and Melilla in 2020.
These ongoing political (and now pandemic) tensions have made travel to and from Ceuta difficult. In the long run, however, we argue that it is in the best interests of both Spain and Morocco to allow greater access across exclave borders, and to allow the physical geography of convenience to overcome the political geography of barriers.
Recent news on Melilla from BBC on June 5, 2021
Accessibility & Cross-border Travel
CEUTA’S land border is adjacent to the country of Morocco and the only surface access to the Spanish mainland is by ferry crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea.
There are two large main airports serving this part of the western Mediterranean:
- Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport, Spain (AGP)
- Tanger-Ibn Battouta Airport, Morocco (TNG)
TNG is the closest large airport to Ceuta, being 86km (53mi) from the exclave. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, TNG served many cities in Europe.
APG is 125km (78mi) from Algeciras (the ferry terminal to cross to Ceuta). It serves many more cities and passengers per year than TNG does.
Ceuta has a heliport — the only one in the world serving two continents. The helicopter companies have offered a 50% discount to Ceuta residents flying to and from Spain in the past, but it was still too expensive to run regular flights.
In 2015, following the suspension of the last regular helicopter services, there was a significant increase in ferry traffic between Ceuta and Algeciras. This indicates there are a significant number of people who want to travel between Ceuta and mainland Spain for commerce, socialising, recreation, and tourism.
Our Research
WE had previously interviewed major tourism and air transport representatives in the wider Ceuta region on their perceptions of the TNG airport becoming the main travel hub to and from Ceuta ( Poulaki and Papatheodorou, 2016) and confirmed that TNG would be a welcome hub for both domestic (Spanish) and international travel to Ceuta — if conditions were right it would facilitate greater border crossing cooperation, increased tourism development, and a more comprehensive regional transport network.
Thus, were it not for the geopolitical tensions between Spain and Morocco, the Spanish exclave should be considered part of TNG’s natural catchment area for tourist travel and tourism development.
Our present study was undertaken to better understand how Ceuta residents decide whether or not to cross the border into Morocco to use TNG airport (Ibn Battouta Airport) near Tanger for their travel to the Spanish mainland or international destinations.
This is our original research article in Tourism Geographies:
(available for free download from the publisher through late April 2021)
Research Questions
MORE specifically, the main aim of this study was to answer the following:
- How do Ceuta’s residents travel?
- How do political relations between Spain and Morocco affect their willingness to travel via Morocco?
- How can the Morocco border-crossing process better facilitate inbound and outbound tourism in Ceuta?
We collected our information through questionnaires and participant observation (a “mixed methods” approach) in 2017. We received 185 valid questionnaires. Participants ranged in age between 25 and 50 years old.
Respondents to the questionnaire were asked to choose their preferred airport, between TNG and AGP, based on different pricing and travel time options to different destinations. Different booking sites were used to propose the most cost- and time-efficient travel alternatives to ten major destinations in Europe and the U.S. (all served by both AGP and TNG), avoiding overnight layovers at airports.
The “Distant Other”
IBN BATTOUTA AIRPORT near Tanger (TNG) is the nearest and most accessible airport to Ceuta. However, most of Ceuta’s residents in our study are unwilling to use TNG. Instead, they preferred to travel to Malaga airport (AGP), despite the greater amount of time it takes to get there.
The reasons they gave for preferring AGP over TNG were :
- A lack of secure car parks in the TNG airport area.
- Inconvenient land border crossing procedure between Spain and Morocco that requires waiting in long queues and much paperwork.
- An aversion towards travel to Morocco due to political tensions between Spain and Morocco.
- An aversion towards travel to Morocco due to Hispano (Spanish) and Maghreb (Northwest African) cultural differences.
We also asked our survey respondents which airport they would choose if it were easier to cross the border and if relations between the two countries were better. In that case, most of them appeared to prefer traveling via TNG.
Some, however, would still prefer AGP because of what they perceived as the enormous gap between Hispano-Catholic-European and Maghreb-Muslim-African cultures. We referred to this as the “distant other” factor, based on Sofield ( 2006) and Simandan ( 2016) who suggested that social, ethnic and cultural differences between people can provoke negative attitudes toward the “distant other”.
Finally, participant observations verified the validity of the statistical results in qualitative terms. One of us, Ioulia Poulaki, engaged in discussions with Ceuta residents and Moroccans about their perceptions of cross-border travel to TNG airport.
These discussions highlighted the distant othering of cultural differences by people on both sides of the border. Moroccans also felt that a great cultural divide existed between themselves and the Spanish Cuetans.
Ioulia also experienced the tense situation that exists when crossing the Ceuta-Morocco border. In addition to the cultural and political differences, this tension is heightened by North Africans seeking to use Ceuta as a means of illegal entry into Spain and the European Union.
Can Tourism in Exclaves Break Down Borders?
GEOPOLITICS and cultural “othering” are significant factors inhibiting development of the Ceuta pene-exclave. Spain and Morocco could collaborate much more to ease these tensions through a tourism-for-peace development approach (see Farmaki 2017).
A tourism-for-peace initiative would greatly increase accessibility to and from the Spanish pene-exclave, as well as opening mobility options for the Cuetan and Moroccan residents. Simplified border crossing procedures alone would lead to more passengers for TNG airport.
More flexible border crossing procedures could also encourage the development of cross-border tours, enhancing the unique cultural differences found in the Moroccan and Spanish lands — an obvious benefit to both sides.
There has even been some talk of opening a special trade zone in Morocco adjacent to the Spanish exclaves. Those discussions, however, have a long way to go. The need for cooperation in this way was made even more evident by protests in Morocco against the border closings with Ceuta due to the pandemic.
If progress can be made, the Hispano-Moroccan border in Ceuta may one day develop into a strong and positively viewed destination for both tourists and investors. In this way, the physical geography of convenience can overcome the political geography of barriers, for the greater good of the local communities on each side of the border.
‘Tourism Geographies’ Papers Cited
- Poulaki, I., Papatheodorou, A., Panagiotopoulos, A. and Liasisou, S. (2020) Exclave accessibility and cross-border travel: the pene-exclave of Ceuta, Spain. Tourism Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1786153
— available for free download from the publisher through late April 2021
- Sofield, T. (2006). Border tourism and border communities: An overview. Tourism Geographies, 8(2), 102–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616680600585489
About the Authors
Ioulia Poulaki, PhD, is currently an Assistant Professor in Tourism Business Administration at the University of Patras, Greece. She has over ten years of professional experience in airline commercial and operational departments.
Professor Dr Andreas Papatheodorou is Professor in Industrial and Spatial Economics with Emphasis on Tourism at the University of the Aegean, Greece, and Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
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This article was originally published at https://medium.com on March 21, 2021.
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