(N) "Is the age of European imperialism in Africa dead? Almost, but not quite. Melilla, a Spanish territory nestling uneasily along the Moroccan Mediterranean coast, is one of the last two European territories on the African continent. Home to some 70,000 people of Spanish, Arab and Berber descent, it is a thriving port city marked by beautiful Spanish modernist architecture. Seized in the late fifteenth century, it served for centuries as a heavily-defended garrison town. In some ways its functions remains unchanged today. Although the medieval castle is now a tourist attraction, the territory is ringed by a forbidding EU-security fence whose function is to keep undocumented migrants from North and West Africa out of the EU." Thus writes my friend Nick Megoran, a keen geographer, who invited some friends to help celebrate his 40th birthday
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