The Peñón de Alhucemas is a tiny island sitting barely 300 metres off the Moroccan coast, plainly visible from Al Hoceima's town beach. Despite its location in Moroccan waters, it is Spanish sovereign territory — one of the several Spanish enclaves and islands that remain along the Moroccan coast, an artifact of Spanish colonial history that Morocco contests but cannot legally recover.
The island is occupied by a Spanish military garrison and is not open to visitors. What you see from the beach is a white church tower and fortifications rising from a small rocky outcrop, with a Spanish flag flying above them. It looks like something from a painting — an improbable fragment of Europe floating in a North African bay. The Moroccan fishing boats and the Spanish flag together make for a distinctly odd sight that tells you something about this coast's complicated history.