Until yesterday, the only mourning beings in Marrakech's Jemaa el Fna square were the snakes and monkeys with which tourists take photographs. But, in the early hours of Friday to Saturday, that vast space – intangible heritage of Humanity since 2001 –, normally full of street games, food stalls, lively storytellers and acrobats, women who paint with henna or merchants of all kinds of products, it looked like a refugee camp, with nervous people who had abandoned their homes or hotels and were moving from one place to another, avoiding approaching the tallest buildings. “The majority went to spend the night in the nearby Koutoubia Gardens,” explains Mohamed el Masaoudi, who serves tourists at an excursion agency right next to the square, by phone.
The famous Palmeral of the city also welcomed hundreds of people who spent the night there, fearful that new aftershocks of the earthquake would be declared, "widely announced by Macuto radio, although they did not occur," says Carlos Varona, director of the Cervantes Institute. in Marrakesh.
Although the most affected area has been the Atlas towns - where the so-called Moroccan Hollywood is located and Californian blockbusters are filmed -, in Marrakech the testimonies collected by this newspaper - also with photos and videos - describe, in the emblematic square of the century XI, groups of people crying or with anguished faces, as well as, inside the medina, some cars buried in rubble and some fallen walls.
The minaret of an old mosque on one side of the square has vanished, as if it were the twin tower of the place and, in its fall, it has injured two people. Although there is still no data on the material damage caused to cultural heritage, the terror seen on the faces of many tourists suggests a decline in this important source of income for the country.
"It all started at 11:10 p.m.," explains Varona, "at first I thought it was an attack, a bomb, it sounded like an explosion, I looked out to see the fire, it sounded like the crash of a crashed plane."
The director of the Instituto Cervantes in the city – which, when it was stationed in India, already suffered the devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015 – qualifies that “although the tremor has been very strong, modern buildings, such as the Cervantes headquarters or my house, have not been affected, except for fallen objects and some punctual breakage. Those that have suffered a huge incidence are the Berber peoples of the Atlas that were near the epicenter, 60 km south of Marrakech. There is no major damage in the city, some minaret fell, but the monuments, such as the Ben Youssef Madrasa, remain standing, except for a few cracks”. El Masaoudi certifies that the Bahia Palace, "next to my house", does not seem to have been damaged either, while, on the other hand, several sections of the red walls have collapsed.
From the most affected area, Aadi Abdessalam, who works as a tour guide in the ksar (fortified city) of Ait Ben Haddu, responds to La Vanguardia's call. “My house has completely collapsed,” he laments, “we were very lucky because the whole family was celebrating a wedding and that saved our lives.” They have slept, therefore, in the open air, in natural spaces that viewers from half the world have known since, in 1954, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves were filmed here, and later Lawrence of Arabia, 007: High Tension, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Mummy, Babel, the Game of Thrones series, Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra or the two parts of Gladiator, among many others.
In such a famous town, less than ten families live, who have never had electricity or water and rely on tourists and film crews as a source of income. Several of them have acted as extras in some of these productions.
“But this is not a movie. A couple of houses have completely collapsed – continues Abdessalam – although the people are fine, we all sleep in the open, five families together on this side of the river. And, well, today tourists came again and we showed them the places.”
-As? Have tourists come quietly, despite the earthquake?
–Yes, specifically two groups of Poles.
Just 30 kilometers away is Ourzazate, one of the most affected areas, which is home to several film studios, including Atlas, one of the largest in the world, with its 150 hectares of sets.
In Marrakech, if the tower in the square has fallen, the nearby Kutubia mosque and its 77-meter-high minaret – which was the inspiration for the Giralda in Seville – still stands, although it has suffered damage yet to be classified, as testified passers-by who saw a cloud of smoke coming out of it. “There is a door that has been affected,” says El Masaoudi after passing by there, “it was from between the 12th and 13th centuries.” The entire medina, or old town, of Marrakech – one of the largest in Africa – has been inscribed on the UNESCO world heritage list since 1985.
More minor damage: a few palm trees have fallen in the Palmeral, another major tourist attraction with more than 100,000 trees watered by a sophisticated system of wells and canals, across 16,000 hectares. Another emblematic building, such as the Yves Saint Laurent Museum, in the Majorelle Gardens, has resisted the tremors.
