M’diq

M’diq lies on the Mediterranean coast, 13 kilometres from Tetouan and 25 kilometres from Ceuta.¹ The town belongs to the prefecture of M’diq-Fnideq, which Decree No. 2-09-319 of 11 June 2009 lists in the wilaya of Tetouan² and which has been part of the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region since 2015.³

At the 2004 census M’diq had 36,756 inhabitants and in 2014 56,227, an average growth of 4.34 per cent a year.⁴ By 2024 the figure had risen to 67,599 in 17,498 households, now growing by 1.86 per cent a year.⁵ Within the prefecture, which had 254,064 people in 2024, M’diq thus ranks third, behind Martil (95,896) and Fnideq (77,250).⁶

Construction of the port began in 1961; in January 1963, while the breakwater was still being built, a violent easterly storm swept it away. From 1966 the port received pleasure boats, and trade and transport followed: cement for Al Hoceima, Melilla and Nador, fruit and vegetables for Gibraltar, and manganese from Beni M’zala for Barcelona.⁷

According to the Agence Nationale des Ports, the port today serves mainly fishing and pleasure boating. In 2009 it was extended with a new marina, and in 2012 the fishing port was rearranged.⁸ Its 4.1 hectares of water are protected by a 530-metre breakwater; on 10 hectares of land stand, among other things, 240 boxes for small-scale fishers, a fish hall, a fisheries research laboratory and a water sports club run by the Royal Yachting Club de M’diq. The marina has 3.9 hectares of water.⁹

Around 2002 the FAO ArtFiMed project recorded two small-scale fishing landing sites in M’diq: the port, with 135 boats and 350 fishers,¹⁰ and the beach, with 30 boats and 100 fishers.¹¹ According to statistics from the Office national des pêches, 2,447 tonnes from coastal and small-scale fishing were landed in the port up to the end of November 2025, 38 per cent more than a year earlier, worth 89.3 million dirhams; 1,145 tonnes of this were pelagic fish.¹²

Tourism on this coast has been described by the geographers Eduardo Araque Jiménez and José Manuel Crespo Guerrero: in 1961 the company Maroc Tourist was set up with Spanish and Moroccan capital to promote the stretch of coast between Ceuta and M’diq under the name Tamuda Bay, above all the beach of Restinga. Later the whole shore zone in M’diq between the sea and the Ceuta–Tetouan motorway was built up; according to their article, an important part of the area’s hotel capacity lies in the beach zone between Fnideq and M’diq.¹³

North of the town lies the Smir marsh with its lagoon, a shallow depression separated from the sea by a low sand bank. Together with the reservoir of the Smir dam, about five kilometres upstream as the crow flies, it has been on the Ramsar Convention list since 22 May 2019, covering 837 hectares. The information sheet lists some 165 vertebrate species and about 60 species of waterbirds for which the site is a stopover on the East Atlantic flyway.¹⁴

The Smir dam was completed in 1991.¹⁵ It lies five kilometres west of M’diq at the confluence of the Oued Smir and the Oued El-lile, holds 38.95 million cubic metres and supplies drinking water to Tetouan and the surrounding coast.¹⁶

The nearest station with WMO normals is Tetouan, 5 metres above sea level. There, mean daily maximum temperatures rise from 17.4 °C in January to 30.3 °C in August; of 654.7 millimetres of annual precipitation, an average of 0.6 millimetres falls in July and 100.4 millimetres in December (WMO climate normals 1991–2020).¹⁷