Moroccan Entrepreneur Defies Odds, Builds Thriving Bridal Business in Tenerife

"All my life, they told me: you can’t, you shouldn’t, you won’t make it..." says Meryem to EFE, who has found her place in the world of bridal fashion and opened a shop where she employs two girls and receives clients "from all over the island" and also "from abroad".

The young woman confides to have overcome all kinds of resistance (social, cultural, religious and family) before reaching this personal fulfillment. She recounts having left her parents’ home in Fez, Morocco at the age of 22 because she wanted to "work and ensure her independence".

This is how she found herself in Casablanca where she spent a year before joining her "boyfriend", a Canarian, in Tenerife in 2006. With him, she becomes the mother of two children, a boy and a girl. Affected by the 2008 economic crisis, they decide to start a tire sales business in Morocco.

They then return to Tenerife and a few months later, the couple ends up divorcing and Meri obtains custody of their two children. In the process, she obtains her Spanish nationality, which allowed her to obtain a loan from a bank and open her clothing store on the main road in Santa Úrsula, near the town hall.

The young woman has just opened a new bridal fashion boutique and has no intention of stopping there. In November, she will present her own line of luxury and middle-class clothing at the Feboda bridal fashion show. Meri considers herself "a Canarian at heart" and wants to "die here, in [her] country".