The Cervantes is Dying

The Cervantes Theatre of Tangier was founded in 1913, before becoming the biggest stage in North Africa. Despite its current alarming situation, Morocco and Spain have still not agreed to save this magnificent art nouveau building

Created by a couple of emigrants from Cadiz to Tangier, the Gran Teatro Cervantes has long represented the relationship between Morocco and Spain. After hosting the Italian tenor Caruso, the French actress Cécile Sorel, or the Egyptian star Youssef Wahbi, then the biggest Spanish stars, the prestigious theatre become a cinema and wrestling room.

It was in 1903 that Manuel Peña Rodríguez arrived on North African soil. This former fisherman from Cadiz emigrated to Tangier in search of fortune. The destination was not chosen at random because he joined the rich uncle of his wife, Antonio Núñez Reina. He then continued his activity at sea on the other side of the Mediterranean, and launched some time later in the sale of medicinal leeches. They were harvested in a well located in his kitchen garden nicknamed "the Huerta del Señor Frasquito el Sevillano". On the death of Esperanza Orellana's uncle, the couple acquired all the properties as sole heirs. An idea then germinated in the mind of Manuel Peña Rodríguez. He would set up a theatre in Tangier. To please his wife passion about theatre and to put Spanish culture in the heart of the city of Tangier, he began work on the garden. The former fisherman, who has become a wealthy merchant, sought to influence his country's culture in a city also occupied by the French and the British.

Laying of the first stone of the theatre on April 2, 1911, Manuel Peña paid 650,000 pesetas and commissioned the Spanish architect Diego Jiménez Armstrong to build this theatre. The architect was a well known Tangierois. Born in the city in 1844, he studied in Paris. He built a very large number of buildings in Tangier, especially for the Jewish bourgeoisie.

Diego Jiménez Armstrong imported all the materials from Spain. The blue frescoes of the dome are the work of the Spanish painter Federico Ribera Bussato. The exterior sculptures were made by the Sevillian artist Cándido Mata Cañamaque. Diego Jiménez Armstrong also installed ten thousand light bulbs inspired by the Teatro Real de Madrid. The theatre is named Cervantes in reference to the great Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes.

The Gran Teatro Cervantes was inaugurated on December 11, 1913 and became the essential place of life of the Spanish exiles and the rest of the Tangier community. With 919 seats (although some sources speak of 1,400 seats), it is at this time the largest theatre in North Africa and a very important place for promotion of the artists of the peninsula adjoining the strait.

From the beginning, the place played a key cultural role in Morocco. But despite its success, the theatre was too big and not profitable. Manuel Peña Rodríguez and Esperanza Orellana Noguera decided to give it to the Spanish state in 1928 for 450,000 pesetas. The theatre offered a varied program with operas (including the voices of Adelina Patti and Enrico Caruso), plays (with María Guerrero, Margarita Xirgu, the French Cécile Sorel and the Egyptian stars Youssef Wahbi and Fatma Ruchdi ). The local theatre troupe "Al Hilal" presented several plays, including Othello , in Arabic, in 1929.

The biggest stars came to the Cervantes to meet the Spanish-Moroccan audience - singers Carmen Sevilla, Imperio Argentina, Juanita Reina, Lola Flores, Antonio Molina, flamenco singer Manolo Caracol and Cuban Antonio Machín. Juanito Valderrama came to play Tangier in 1947 and meet the Spanish who fled the Franco regime. In Tangier Juanito Valderrama composed his greatest song, "El Emigrante" (the emigrant). Valderrama later said he wrote the song as soon as he went to his hotel after the performance.

The theatre prospered in the first half of the 20th century with operas, zarzuelas (Spanish comic opera) and concerts. But from the 50s, this cultural centre begins to experience slack periods. To attract the population, its managers rely on another type of event. The Gran Teatro Cervantes became a wrestling room! Catholics, Jews, Muslims ... all came to see the show, halfway between sport and theatre. Many wrestlers were Spanish. They come from the other side of the Mediterranean because they have had their day in Spain. They are looking for a second wind in the international city of Tangier. But soon enough, the spectators tired of seeing only Spaniards. Jews and Muslims wanted to identify with a character, a fighter. So after failing to find a Jew from Casablanca, the organisers decide to bring back a new Spaniard they posed as a Muslim.

After independence, in 1956, the theatre experienced new troubles. The Spaniards were gradually leaving Tangier. The government was abandoning the place. The theatre reinvented itself for a while as a movie theatre but the conditions were really bad and the building was getting worse. During the war in Algeria, the proceeds of some performances are donated to the FLN. Gradually, events were spaced out and rare. The Cervantes was abandoned and closed definitively in 1962. Between 1972 and 1992, it was rented, without reopening, by the Spanish state to the city of Tangier for a symbolic dirham. Until today, nobody has maintained the theatre which falls every day a little more in ruins.

Since Mohamed VI came to power in 1999, the city has aroused more interest with the construction of a large port, a connection to a high-speed train ... Unfortunately, this emblematic place is still deserted , although it is still possible to visit for some coins. Many people have gone to the wall to raise funds and rehabilitate the theater. In 1994, the architect Mariano Vázquez Espí proposed a project to the Spanish government to preserve the Cervantes. In 2004, the Cervantes Association of Cultural Action and Hispano-Moroccan Friendship was created. This association seeks to avoid the disappearance of the Cervantes. In 2006, the association managed to raise 200,000 euros from the Director of Cultural and Scientific Relations of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Half of the budget was spent on emergency interventions. The Spanish authorities have estimated the works at 5 million euros. Founding member and current active committee of this association, Rachid Taferssiti said that the Cervantes was ranked in 2007 national heritage, but "the solution to really save it is new activities".

Despite the many calls for help, the theatre celebrated a sad centenary in 2013. Artists have written and sang to revive it, petition in support, but the Cervantes is still there, abandoned in front of the port of Tangier. The yellow and blue ceramic on the front shows the past and the decrepitude of the Spanish settlement in the Straits. In the entrance hall you can still see ceramics by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Morocco and Spain, who both wanted to reach an agreement to save the place, took a very long time to negotiate. Spain refusing to pay for a place outside their lands preferred to leave the Cervantes in 2015. But this decision, it was necessary to agree on the terms of the project, Spain wishing to keep an eye on the programming.

While the work was to begin in 2018, a UNESCO commission, according to the site Le360, stopped the renovation because the plans would not respect the original construction. After all these imbroglios, the situation is at a standstill and a big question mark still weighs on the Cervantes.

Morocco and Spain, because of their geographical proximity, have always had a special relationship. Separated only by the 14 kilometre Strait of Gibraltar, the two countries have influenced each other. The presence of Spaniards in Morocco dates back to the signing of the Spanish-Moroccan peace and trade treaty of 1767. But at the time, their number was still very small. It was in the nineteenth century that the Iberian presence really grew, especially after the Second Moroccan War (1859-1860), which Spain emerged victorious. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in 1912, the French and the Spanish took possession of the Moroccan power by the establishment of a protectorate. The Spaniards inherit a strip of land in the North and one in the South of the country.  A large number of traders settled there, seeing that economic relations between the two countries are intensifying. But in 1923, Tangier inherited a special status. The city became an international zone under the joint administration of 9 different countries. The city then had a great cultural mix. The Spanish diaspora continued to grow in Morocco until the declaration of independence in 1956.

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