An elegant hotel to enjoy "a delicious lie"

BarcelonaIn the late 1980s, film director Bernardo Bertolucci appeared in Tangier. Few people in the city were surprised; they were already accustomed to receiving curious people who seemed to be fleeing from something or seeking inspiration. Bertolucci was looking for the American writer Paul Bowles, who in 1949 had written The protective sky in Tangier in the midst of an existential crisis. He had imagined a tale of loss and destruction about an American marriage falling apart in Morocco. A harsh and magical tale that would fascinate millions of people. One of them, Bernardo.

The Italian director asked to sleep at the Hotel Fuentes, the same one where Bowles spent long periods during a difficult time, as his wife was then suffering from psychiatric problems that would land her in a hospital in Malaga. Without Jane, a vital woman who was also a great writer, Paul ended up living alone in Tangier, watching the city he had loved disappear, full of people fleeing authoritarian regimes, sexual repression, or toxic relationships. Bertolucci filmed a good part of his film here. In a city that, as Andalusian art critic Emilio Sanz de Soto says, perhaps "was a delicious lie," where writers and poets sought freedom and the locals let them.

You can still enjoy this lie. You can do so at the Hotel El Minzah. A place where figures such as Winston Churchill, Rita Hayworth, Onassis, Yves Saint Laurent, Francis Ford Coppola, and Bertolucci, who preferred him at the now-closed Hotel Fuentes, have slept. Minzah would be the setting for the film, and today you can sleep there without paying a fortune. Apparently, the rich prefer modern, luxurious hotels with giant pools and have somewhat ignored this beautiful building. So, we mere mortals can sleep there without having to take out a loan.

Tangier is a city to let yourself go. A city to wander in search of the traces of those who made it their home, as is clear if you visit the old American consulate, where they have on display objects left behind by geniuses like Burroughs, Bowles, and Tennessee Williams. A city that lives off the past, lives off that great lie. Bowles, before his death, would say: "Today there is no one left. There are many people, but there is no one. Tangier no longer exists; it is ruined, rotten, corrupt, nothing remains."

But things do remain. You can go to the old Cine Alcázar, owned by Spaniards when Tangier was controlled from Madrid and not Rabat. Right in front is the Café Colón, where Bertolucci filmed the final scene of his film, asking Bowles to appear. A traditional café, an old cinema, and a scene where fiction and reality come together. In a delicious lie.

Recommendation for traveling to Tangier

Film: The Sheltering Sky

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Year: 1990