Melilla

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 perimetre 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. As of 2025, Melilla had a population of 87,067. It has a small airport and its port is connnected to the ports of Málaga, Motril, and Almería via ferry. The population is chiefly divided between people of Iberian and Riffian extraction.