Mosque in Dakhla

The area has been inhabited by Berbers since ancient times. Oulad Dlim is an Arab tribe of Himyari from Yemen that settled in the Sahara in the twelfth century. Dakhla was expanded by Spanish settlers during the expansion of their empire.[citation needed] The Spanish interest in the desert coast of Western Africa's Sahara arose as the result of fishing carried out from the nearby Canary Islands by Spanish fishers and as a result of the Barbary pirates menace.

Spanish fishers were seal fur hunters, traders, and whalers along the Saharan coast from Dakhla to Cabo Blanco from 1500 to the present, engaging in whaling for Humpback whales and their calves, mostly around Cape Verde, and the Gulf of Guinea in Annobón, São Tomé and Príncipe islands through 1940. These fishing activities had a negative impact on wildlife, causing the disappearance or endangering of many species, particularly marine mammals and birds.[1][2]

The Spaniards established whaling stations with some cod fishing and trading. In 1881, a dock was anchored off the coast of the Río de Oro Peninsula to support the work of the Canarian fishing fleet.[citation needed]

However, it was not until 1884 that Spain formally founded the watering place as Villa Cisneros, in the settlement dated in 1502 by Papal bull. It was included in the enclaves conceded to the Spanish to the east of the Azores islands. In 1884, the settlement was promoted by the Spanish Society of Africanists[3] and funded by the government of Canovas del Castillo.

 Early Spanish provisional settlement in the Río de Oro Peninsula during the exploratory works led by Emilio Bonelli (published in January 1885 in La Ilustración Española y Americana).

The Spanish military, along with the Spanish Africanist Emilio Bonelli, claimed the coast between Cape Bojador and Cabo Blanco for Spain, founding three settlements on the Saharan coast: one in Villa Cisneros, named in honour of Francisco Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), the Spanish prelate who was the Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition; and another in Cabo Blanco for seal hunting, which was given the name of Medina Gatell; and another in Angra de Cintra with the name of Puerto Badia, in honour of the Arabist and adventurer Domingo Badia. Bonelli got the native inhabitants of the peninsula de Río de Oro to sign an agreement that placed them under the "protection" of the Kingdom of Spain. Due to the presence of the three new settlements, in December 1884 the Spanish Government officially informed the main colonial powers assembled at the Berlin Conference that the Spanish Crown was in possession of the territory lying between Cape Bojador and Cape Blanco.

During the colonial period, Spanish authorities made Dakhla the capital of the province of Río de Oro, one of the two regions of what was known as Spanish Sahara. They built a military fortress and a modern Catholic church. A prison camp also existed at the fort during the Spanish Civil War at which writers such as Pedro García Cabrera were imprisoned.

 The fort at Villa Cisneros in 1930

During the 1960s, the Francoist State also built Dakhla Airport, one of the three paved airports in Western Sahara. It was from Dakhla, then known as Villa Cisneros, that on 12 January 1976, General Gomez de Salazar became the last Spanish soldier to depart what until that moment had been the colony of the Spanish Sahara; faced with Moroccan and Mauritanian pressure, Spanish authorities decided to give up the territory peacefully, instead of undertaking a fight that they believed they could win but would have cost many lives on all sides. Between 1975 and 1979, Dakhla was the provincial capital of the Mauritanian province of Tiris al-Gharbiyya, as Mauritania annexed the southern portion of Western Sahara. Dakhla Airport is used as a civilian airport and by Royal Air Maroc. The 3000 m runway can accommodate a Boeing 737 or smaller aircraft.[citation needed] The passenger terminal covers 670 m2 and is capable of handling up to 55,000 passengers per year.[citation needed]

Dakhla was occupied by Spain from the late 19th century to 1975, when power was then relinquished to a joint administration between Morocco and Mauritania.[4] There was a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire in 1991, but as recently as 2006, most UN member states have refused to recognise Moroccan sovereignty in the area.[4]

In 2020, the Gambia,[5] Guinea,[6] Djibouti,[7] Liberia,[8] Burkina Faso,[9] Equatorial Guinea,[10] Guinea-Bissau,[11] and the Democratic Republic of the Congo[12] opened consulates in Dakhla.