Spanish YouTuber Shares Life in Morocco After Converting to Islam

Aurora Botello arrived nine years ago in Tetouan, a city in northern Morocco, located near Tangier and the autonomous city of Ceuta. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she created her YouTube channel "De Granada a Tetuán" to "tell the daily life of a Spaniard living in northern Morocco," but above all to "communicate with the outside world" and distract herself to chase her "nervousness." The YouTuber already has 17,000 subscribers and more than 5,000 on her Instagram account of the same name.

"It brings me a lot. It also stresses me out sometimes, because it’s not easy to record, but I like it. I’m always looking for sites. Since I’m nervous, it helps me relax a bit," explains Aurora to Granada Digital. The young woman from Granada found herself in Tetouan to live with her boyfriend, a Moroccan she met on social media at the age of 15. "We talked on the Internet for two years and saw each other via webcam. I went to see him at Christmas, in the summer... Since he couldn’t come to Spain because he didn’t have papers, I came to settle here with him," she recounts.

Aurora converted to Islam at the age of 15, shortly after meeting her husband. "I didn’t become Muslim out of love. I read a lot on the Internet, I bought books, I did a lot of research before making the decision to become Muslim, because we don’t know when we’re going to die and I wanted to die a Muslim," she confides. As a Muslim, the young woman considers herself a "normal and ordinary person." "I studied, I worked, I’m still looking for work, I’m a teacher. And I’m doing well," she says.

Originally from Granada, Aurora does not feel like a foreigner in Tetouan where "practically 70% of the people understand Spanish. They are sister cities. It’s as if I were in Granada in the 1970s, that’s how I imagine it," specifies the mother of two children, Ismaël, 8, and Laila, 5. The young woman assures that she often comes to Granada to see her family to whom she is very attached. She does not rule out returning to settle in Granada where she would like her children to pursue their university studies.