Why Does Spain Have Two Cities in Africa? ⭐ Ceuta & Melilla | B1 Graded Reader Audiobook

Hello and welcome to Woo English. Here [music] you can practice English through interesting stories about history, people, business, and the world around us. [music] Today's story is written in clear B1 English. You do not need to understand [music] every word. Just listen, follow the story and try to understand the main ideas. Today we are going to Africa.

But our story is also about Spain. In the summer of 2026, tens of thousands of people moved toward a small city on the northern coast of Morocco. Some came by road, some entered the sea, some tried to swim around the border. Spanish police and soldiers were waiting. The city was called Seut. And for many people watching the news,

there was an obvious question. Why were so many people trying to enter Suta? But there was another question, a much stranger one. [music] Why was Spain defending a land border in Africa? Suta is physically in Africa. Morocco surrounds it on land, but Suta is Spanish. And it is not alone. Farther east, there

is another Spanish city on the African coast, Mala. Two Spanish cities in Africa, both claimed by Morocco. How did this happen? And why, after hundreds of years, are they still Spanish? To answer that, we need more than the news. We need to cross the straight of Gibralar. We need to travel back more than 600

years. And we need to discover why this small corner of the world has connected Europe and Africa for centuries. Let us begin with the map.

Chapter 1. Europe [music] on African soil. Look at a map of Europe and Africa. Spain is in the north. Morocco is in [music] the south. Between them lies the straight of Gibralar. At its narrowest point, Europe and Africa are only about 14 km apart. On a clear day, you can see the other