Tarfaya

Tarfaya (Arabic طرفاية; formerly Villa Bens ) is a neighborhood on the Atlantic City in southern Morocco, near the border with the Western Sahara. The town has about 4,500 inhabitants. In colonial times, the village was named for Villa Bens Spanish protectorate Southern Morocco and was the administrative seat.

Supra-regional importance had Tarfaya than 350,000 participants in the Green march lived in November 1975 in the vicinity of the place in a tent camp. The camp covered an area of ​​70 km2 22,000 tents.

On the beach there is a memorial for the pilot and writer Antoine de Saint- Exupéry, who was stationed here in the 1920s. Noteworthy are also the region in the towering sand dunes on the Atlantic coast.

In early 2008, a ferry service between Tarfaya and Puerto del Rosario, Fuerteventura, was added. The car ferry Assalama the shipping company Naviera Armas wrong three times a week. It was the first ferry service between the Canary Islands and the nearby coast of Africa. In anticipation of the possible thereby become car traffic between the Canary Islands and Morocco began a modest economic recovery in Tarfaya. This ferry, however, came for an indefinite period to a halt again when the Assalama on 30 April 2008 leak suggested in a botched maneuvers in the port of Tarfaya and later sank in shallow water in front of Tarfaya.

In Tarfaya there is an airport with the IATA code TFY.

Wind farm

In February 2013, the French utility GDF Suez announced that he at Tarfaya claims to be the largest wind farm in Africa build (or build from Siemens ) and operate wants.

There are 131 wind turbines are built with a peak output of 300 megawatts. The total cost of the project estimated GDF Suez to 450 million euros. The wind farm is expected to go into service in 2014 and provide about 40 percent of the rising demand for power in Morocco.