Early history Rio de Oro was
settled in the twelfth century by the
Oulad Delim, an
Arab Bedouin tribe of
South Arabian descent that emigrated from
Yemen. Dakhla was expanded by
Spanish settlers during
the expansion of their empire. The Spanish interest in the desert coast of Western Africa's Sahara arose as the result of fishing carried out from the nearby
Canary Islands by Spanish fishers and as a result of the
Barbary pirates menace. Spanish fishers were seal fur hunters, traders, and whalers along the Saharan coast from Dakhla to
Cabo Blanco from 1500 to the present, engaging in whaling for
Humpback whales and their calves, mostly around
Cape Verde, and the
Gulf of Guinea in
Annobón,
São Tomé and Príncipe islands through 1940. These fishing activities had a negative impact on wildlife, causing the disappearance or endangering of many species, particularly
marine mammals and birds.
Spanish colonization The Spaniards established whaling stations with some cod fishing and trading. In 1881, a
dock was anchored off the coast of the
Río de Oro Peninsula to support the work of the Canarian fishing fleet. However, it was not until 1884 that Spain formally founded the watering place as Villa Cisneros, in the settlement dated in 1502 by
Papal bull. It was included in the enclaves conceded to the Spanish to the east of the
Azores islands. Upon arriving in
Rio de Oro in 1884 to establish their first coastal factories, the Spanish were forced to deal with the
Oulad Delim, a
Sahrawi Arab tribe that controlled the entirety of Rio de Oro and a strip of land in
Mauritania extending from
Nouadhibou to Idjlil. In 1884, the settlement of Villa Cisneros was promoted by the
Spanish Society of Africanists and funded by the government of
Canovas del Castillo. In the same year, the Oulad Delim attacked the trading post and looted its stores before the Spanish issued a royal decree that placed the coast from
Cape Bojador to
Cape Blanc under Spanish colonization. By 1886, Spanish colonial authority was extended 150 miles inland. The Spanish reached an agreement with a
sheikh of the local Oulad Delim two years later. during the exploratory works led by
Emilio Bonelli (published in January 1885 in
La Ilustración Española y Americana). The Spanish military, along with the Spanish Africanist
Emilio Bonelli, claimed the coast between
Cape Bojador and Cabo Blanco for Spain, founding three settlements on the Saharan coast: one in Villa Cisneros, named in honour of
Francisco Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), the Spanish
Humanist,
Prime Minister,
Regent and
prelate who was the
Grand Inquisitor during the
Spanish Inquisition; and another in Cabo Blanco for seal hunting, which was given the name of Medina Gatell; and another in Angra de Cintra with the name of Puerto Badia, in honour of the Arabist and adventurer
Domingo Badia. Bonelli got the native inhabitants of the peninsula de Río de Oro to sign an agreement that placed them under the "protection" of the
Kingdom of Spain. Due to the presence of the three new settlements, in December 1884 the Spanish Government officially informed the main colonial powers assembled at the
Berlin Conference that the
Spanish Crown was in possession of the territory lying between
Cape Bojador and Cape Blanco. During the
colonial period, Spanish authorities made Dakhla, then known as Villa Cisneros, the capital of the province of
Río de Oro, one of the two regions of what was known as
Spanish Sahara. The authorities built a military fortress and it became an important way-station for the Toulouse-Dakar mail-plane during the 1920s. The Cisneros way-station features in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s novel Courier Sud. The Spanish also built a modern
Catholic church there. A prison camp existed at the fort during the
Spanish Civil War at which writers such as
Pedro García Cabrera were imprisoned. During the 1960s, the
Francoist State also built
Dakhla Airport, one of the three paved airports in
Western Sahara. It was from Dakhla that on 12 January 1976, General Gomez de Salazar became the last Spanish soldier to depart what until that moment had been the colony of the Spanish Sahara; faced with Moroccan and Mauritanian pressure, Spanish authorities decided to give up the territory peacefully, instead of undertaking a fight that they believed they could win but would have cost many lives on all sides. Between 1975 and 1979, Dakhla was the provincial capital of the Mauritanian province of
Tiris al-Gharbiyya, as Mauritania annexed the southern portion of Western Sahara. Dakhla Airport is used as a civilian airport and by
Royal Air Maroc. The 3000 m runway can accommodate a
Boeing 737 or smaller aircraft. The passenger terminal covers 670 m2 and is capable of handling up to 55,000 passengers per year.
Moroccan occupation Dakhla was occupied by Spain from the late 19th century to 1975, when power was then relinquished to a joint administration between Morocco and Mauritania.
Guinea,
Djibouti,
Liberia,
Burkina Faso,
Equatorial Guinea,
Guinea-Bissau, and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo opened consulates in Dakhla. As of 2024, the government of Morocco was in the process of building a $1.2-billion port in Dakhla as part of its "national port strategy". Construction was expected to be completed in 2028. == Economy ==