Founded 30 November 1920 Population 3,726 (2004) Controlled by Mauritania | Time zone GMT Number of airports 1 | |
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Weather 23°C, Wind N at 19 km/h, 52% Humidity | ||
La Güera (also known as La Agüera, Lagouira, or El Gouera) (Arabic: الكويرة) is a ghost town on the Atlantic coast at the southern tip of Western Sahara, on the western side of the Ras Nouadhibou peninsula, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) west of Nouadhibou. It is also the name of a daira at the Sahrawi refugee camps in south-western Algeria. The name comes from the Spanish word Agüera which is a ditch that carries rainwater to crops. By 2002, it had been abandoned and partially overblown by sand, inhabited only by a few Imraguen fishermen and guarded by a Mauritanian military outpost, despite this not being Mauritanian territory.
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Map of La G%C3%BCera
It is the southernmost town of Western Sahara, claimed by both the Kingdom of Morocco However, Lagouira is situated south of the Moroccan Wall, and long abandoned by both Moroccan and Polisario Front forces, though a January 2015 report from a pro-SADR news website claimed that Polisario military personnel had been allowed into the area.
Foundation and settlement
La Güera came into existence in late 1920, when Spanish colonizer Francisco Bens (who had earlier taken possession of the Cape Juby region as a protectorate in 1916), after negotiating with tribal chiefs of the zone, established a fort and an air base on the western side of the Ras Nouadhibou peninsula, just a few miles away from the French settlement of Port Étienne (now Nouadhibou) on the eastern side of the peninsula. (In the 1912 Convention of Madrid, Spain and France had agreed on a border between Mauritania and Spanish possessions that ran down the middle of the peninsula.)
In 1924, La Güera was incorporated into the Spanish colony of Río de Oro. During the short period (1920-1924) that the town was ruled as a separate part of the colony it released its own postage stamps. The town was served by La Güera Airport until the 1970s.
Western Sahara War
In 1979, when Mauritania withdrew from the war, La Güera's population was estimated to be 816 inhabitants.