Allied|Plaza de Cairasco, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria — where Casablanca was rebuilt in seven days

Max Vatan walks into a crowded colonial square, finds the woman he is supposed to pretend to be married to, and kisses her in front of strangers who must believe it. The square is meant to be Casablanca in 1942. It is actually Plaza de Cairasco, a small palm-shaded plaza in the middle of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, roughly a thousand kilometres north of Morocco.

Robert Zemeckis chose it over locations in Cádiz because of the way the buildings enclose the space. The Gabinete Literario stands on one side, its pale façade all curls and balconies, and the Hotel Madrid on another, and between them the plaza holds a pocket of nineteenth-century air that a camera can fill with 1940s cars and awnings without arguing. The art department spent more than five months preparing the transformation. The shoot itself took just over seven days.

Almost nothing had to be built. The palms were already there. The tiled café terraces were already there. What the crew added was signage in French and Arabic, sand blown across the stones, and extras in linen.

Go in the morning, before the terraces fill. Stand with the Gabinete Literario on your left and look across at the low buildings opposite, and you are standing where the film's central deception begins — two spies performing a marriage for an audience of collaborators. Then sit down and order a coffee, which is what the square has always actually been for.