Reborn Tangier shakes off its louche reputation

TANGIER, Morocco, Oct 3 (Reuters) Visitors brace for the worst when they step off the ferry in Tangier, known for decades as the shady hideout of drug barons, its crumbling old town supposedly swarming with pickpockets and rogue guides.

It's time to rewrite the guidebooks, say the people of a town beginning to rediscover some of the style and sophistication it enjoyed for centuries as a crossroads between the West and the Arab world, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Residents say petty crime has abated since a new police unit began pacing the narrow streets of the old medina. Pavements have been relaid and neglected open spaces cleaned up and replanted with flowers and elegant palm trees.

Ugly buildings that loomed over the seafront have been bulldozed and replaced by upmarket restaurants serving seafood to well-heeled Spanish day-trippers.

Investors from the Gulf are moving in with projects for coastal resorts with spas, riding centres and marinas. In the old town, growing numbers of Western tourists crowd past the cafes where old men in jellabas snooze over glasses of mint tea.

Residents say Governor Mohamed Hassad recently went for a swim at the city beach, once one of the dirtiest in the world.

He survived.

''People seem a little scared of losing their bearings as things are moving so quickly,'' said Larbi R'Miki, president of the local cultural association, whose annual music and literature festivals are gaining international renown.

Local officials want to restore some of the lustre of Tangier's interwar years when it was an international zone run by the foreign powers that had coveted and fought over the strategic city for centuries.

Then, it was an island of prosperity in a poor region neglected by colonial master Spain, its lax laws, low taxes and laid-back atmosphere attracting millionaires, shady businessmen and hard-up writers.

ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE After independence in 1956, the Moroccan authorities moved to close down Tangier's brothels, drug dens and gay bars, to the relief of conservative natives fed up with playing host to Europeans seeking an alternative lifestyle.

Economic decline set in as the international banks with offshore operations relocated to Switzerland or Spain.

When foreign owners of small businesses, cinemas, cafes and restaurants were told to take Moroccan business partners, thousands left, the gap they left in the economy filled partly by smugglers and cannabis barons.

''Tangier became practically a town of outlaws who couldn't care less about culture,'' said R'Miki. ''This was a nouveau riche that went straight from owning a donkey to a four-wheel-drive.'' MORE REUTERS BDP KP0923