Tindouf Province
Western Tiris was the lower half of Río de Oro, the southern province of the former Spanish Sahara, comprising 88,000 km² (33,977 sq mi) with a population of 12,897. It consisted mostly of barren desert terrain, scarcely populated except by some thousands of Sahrawi nomads, many of whom had fled towards the Algerian Tindouf Province in 1975. A few minor settlements dotted the coast, and the largest of these, Dakhla (formerly Villa Cisneros), was made the provincial capital.