It's in Mezgalef, not far from Larache, 85 kilometers south of Tangier.
A village forgotten by the gods, where children walk around barefoot and where men plow with plows.
Never mind the golden beaches and foamy waves.
Mezgalef is a place that we flee, with more or less success.
Spain is so close, just 14 kilometers away.
Some perish at sea, others simply disappear, leaving the so-called "
white widows
" alone in the village and without means of subsistence.
When Yasmina Filali and her brother Fouad fell in love with the region in 1992, they discovered a hinterland stuck in the Middle Ages.
The men make a living from fishing while the women walk for hours under a blazing sun to fetch a few cans of
In 2007, they built two houses there.
Fifteen years later, the three villages Mezgalef, Dcheir and Cherouah have changed.
Slowly.
Here, time flows with the winds and the seasons.
In Dchier, the stone and earth constructions were repainted blue and white, 8 kilometers of pipes were installed, the village school was rehabilitated.
All that remains is to find a teacher.
Fouad Filali, for this, has an idea: to build him a house.
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Continue Antonia's journey
Visit to La Fiermontina
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“
It is not enough to inject funds to change mentalities;
we are trying to empower the inhabitants
,” comments Yasmina soberly.
A philosophy that she has been developing for thirty years at the Fondation Orient-Occident, which helps refugees by offering them a job, a social role, in other words, hope.
This is how the idea of the Fiermontina Ocean was born three years ago.
Owners of the Fiermontina Lecce, cradle of the collection, and of the Fiermontina Paris, Yasmina and Fouad Filali decide to invest this piece of Atlantic paradise.
Their most ambitious and personal dream.
Because it is a question of following the route of their adored grandmother, the dazzling Antonia Fiermonte, painter, violinist, muse of the couturier Lanvin, tragically deceased at 42, left Italy for Paris, and finally Morocco, where Antonia the Catholic will meet the cadi, doctor of Koranic law, to whose son she will marry her daughter.
“
Antonia's absence only reinforces her presence.
When imagining the Fiermontina Ocean, we said to ourselves
: this is what we came to look for here.
A way to continue his journey.
»
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In June, 15 suites (including 11 with infinity pool on the ocean) and two family villas will allow everyone to participate in this quest.
Because it is indeed an inner odyssey to which the guests are invited.
Four traditional houses and a spa have been built in the very heart of Dcheir.
The result of paid education, two years of meetings with the mokadem (representative of religious power) and the inhabitants to convince them to join the project.
Training work then.
Cooks from Casablanca and Rabat came to share their knowledge in order to contradict the fate of the villagers, forced to find a job in the sardine factories of Larache.
Finally, a work of listening, initiated by Martín Burt, at the origin of the Fundación Paraguaya and author of the bestseller Who Owns Poverty?.
The principle is simple: in a notebook, each family evaluates its level (or rather its "
feeling
") of poverty and the essential means to get out of it, from opening a bank account to schooling for its children. .
Breakfast in the village
The breakfast prepared by the women of the neighboring village for La Fiermontina Ocean.
Eric Martin / Le Figaro Voyage
La Fiermontina wants to be virtuous and exemplary.
The vegetable and fruit production (salad, tomatoes, avocados, beans, etc.) grown between the olive trees allows the estate to be self-sufficient, the fish is bought from the fishermen, only the meat comes from Larache.
Small electric Jeeps will be used to move around the estate.
But these efforts would be in vain if the customers were not associated with the philosophy of the place.
Hence the idea of “
intelligent villas
”, integrated both into the landscape and into local sociability.
In the morning, the guests will have the leisure to taste the breakfast prepared in turn by the women of the village: “
The housewives receive at home, says Yasmina, it is an important moment, where the roles are reversed.
»
That morning, in Dchier, Ikram (which means generosity in Darija) welcomes us to a house painted with white and blue lime.
It is 9 a.m., a shy sun illuminates the courtyard where breakfast has been prepared – honey, baghrir (thousand-hole pancakes), amlou (almond spread, honey and argan oil), olives, homemade jam, fresh goat cheese, cinnamon cakes… Next door, the neighbour's bread oven is starting to smoke.
Each family has its own.
Fouad Filali would like to build a collective bread oven, where women would meet, a place of exchange, an agora.
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When you come from Tangier, you can only be sucked in by the unreal silence that inhabits these places.
When night falls, the sky explodes with stars and the winds sing the praises of the horizon.
How long until this protected place is ransacked by mass tourism?
Convinced of the urgency (and tired of the quads which took the fragile dunes for F1 circuits), Fouad and Yasmina managed to have 9000 hectares classified as a natural park, a French invention.
It was also agreed with the shepherds that the herds would clean the forests to avoid fires, the main devastaters of the flora.
Fouad and Yasmina are not the only ones fighting for the biodiversity of the Larache region.
About twenty minutes from the Fiermontina, there is an extraordinary garden, imagined thirty-five years ago by the Italian writer and botanist Umberto Pasti.
This man has the power to turn dust into green gold.
At home, cacti studded with ruby flowers and climbing roses celebrate the love of stone and plants: a sublime and insane utopia, irrigated by a well 120 meters deep.
Decidedly, crazy dreams grow well in Morocco, when they are bathed by the ocean.
La Fiermontina Ocean opens its doors on June 1, 2023. 11 suites, 2 villas, 4 houses.
From €250 per night for a house in the village, and €550 for ocean villas.
Traditional hammam and Moorish café in the rural village of Dchier, 2 restaurants (Italian and Moroccan), beach club, seminar room for 60 people.
All in a protected natural environment, located 40 minutes from the port village of Asilah, renowned for its medina, its mural frescoes and its summer music festival.
Visit of the residence of Umberto Pasti on request from the hotel.
