Laayoune or
El Aaiún are respectively the French and Spanish transliterations of one of the possible Romanized
Maghrebi Arabic names for the city:
Layoun, which could mean "the springs", in reference to the oases that furnish the town's water supply. The city was founded by the
Spanish captain
Antonio de Oro in 1938 as a small military outpost, but quickly became the
Spanish Sahara's administrative and political center. The location was chosen for two reasons: the presence of water and the strategic military position the site offered. Its position on the banks of the
Saguia el-Hamra river enabled good communication with the harbors of
Tarfaya and
Boujdour. The city underwent a period of rapid economic growth in the 1940s due to the discovery of vast deposits of
phosphates at the
Bou Craa site fueling a phosphate industry. The town was the scene of the
Zemla Intifada that occurred on June 17, 1970, that culminated in a massacre, resulting in the deaths ranging from 2 to 11 people and hundreds injured. After the Spanish withdrew in 1975, Laayoune, along with much of the rest of the Western Sahara, was
annexed by Morocco. Since then, large numbers of Moroccans have moved to the city, and now outnumber the indigenous
Sahrawis, who have gradually given up their traditional
nomadic lifestyles. The city has continued to develop rapidly and benefits of a
desalinization plant. The city's rate of
urbanization continues to outpace that of Morocco, though on most indicators of
human development, it lags behind southern Morocco. ==Climate==