When will the Portuguese City be rehabilitated?

More than ten years after its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the rehabilitation of the Portuguese City, the historical core of El-Jadida, is still waiting. The alarm bell had, moreover, been sounded by the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which made it one of its main recommendations. The mission sent by the Council had notably remarked on the absence of a precise plan for the management of the site and its surroundings. It had then strongly recommended the application, both inside and in front of the Portuguese City, of strict urban planning rules in order to preserve the visual integration of the fortifications. Currently, one sees there again only two urinals and a commemorative plaque of the famous date of the classification by UNESCO. The City was a Portuguese trading post, built probably on the site of an ancient Phoenician trading post founded in the…