Moroccan Immigrant’s Journey: From Housewife to Successful Children’s Play Center Owner in Spain

Loubna joined her husband in Pontevedra, where he worked as a welder. "I arrived married and six months pregnant," she confides to La Voz de Galicia, specifying that she learned Spanish before leaving El Jadida in Morocco. Despite her degree in secretarial accounting, she focused on raising her first daughter, who is now 18 years old, and was a housewife. The idea of creating a play center for children crossed her mind in 2009, but she gave priority to motherhood rather than her dream. She had two more daughters and had almost forgotten this project.

In 2021, she enrolled in adult education courses to continue her studies. To celebrate her youngest daughter’s birthday, she chose a setting and did the decoration. "My daughter loves Frozen and I wanted to please her. But in the end, I didn’t find what I was looking for. So I chose a place in Marin, they let me do the decoration," she explains. Her sister living in Switzerland as well as other relatives invited to this birthday party liked the decoration. This motivated Loubna to create her company, AladdinPark, which opened its doors four months ago in the Pasarón neighborhood.

"It’s a quiet and accessible neighborhood and I liked it. It was difficult for me to rent it, because there were a lot of expenses to be made for the fittings and I had a hard time at the beginning, but little by little we are moving forward," explains Loubna. Muslim, she did not wear a veil before the birth of her second daughter. "I don’t know how people were going to welcome me, whether they were going to come or not. I had never had this kind of problem, but these are very different cultures," she added.