Sidi Ifni Military Treasury

The Sidi Ifni Military Treasury — formerly the Spanish Consulate — is the most commanding building in the town: a confident Art Deco structure in pale yellow, with a crenellated roofline, arched windows, and a flagpole from which Morocco's flag now flies in place of Spain's. It was built in the 1930s as part of the Spanish colonial administration's effort to create a proper administrative capital in the territory of Ifni, and it succeeded on its own terms: the building is well-proportioned and in better repair than most of what surrounds it.

The building is closed to visitors and currently used by the Moroccan military. But the exterior is the point — walk around it slowly, look at the ironwork on the windows, and consider that it was built 1,800 km from Madrid in a climate and landscape that had nothing to do with Spain. The result was a little piece of 1930s Iberian confidence marooned on the Atlantic coast of Africa, and it has never quite recovered from the paradox.

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After Spain ceded Sidi Ifni to Morocco in 1969, the consulate building was repurposed as the Military Treasury — the least glamorous possible second act for a building that once represented the ambitions of a colonial empire. It has been closed to the public for decades, which is part of why it has the air of a place that time forgot.