Mos Espa

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Homeworld:
  Tatooine

• 

From the Movies

Mos Espa is one of few port cities on Tatooine, born out of the desert and built piece by piece over many years. Domed buildings protect the citizens against the glare of the twin suns and the scorching heat. Among the dwellings, workspaces, and commercial operations of many bizarre kinds there are also entertainment areas, including some of colossal scale. The famed Mos Espa Grand Arena can can hold an audience almost as large as the city's entire population.

Most of Mos Espa's inhabitants are settlers and subsistence earners who scratch out a meager living as best they can. The only real wealth in Mos Espa is tied up in gambling and off-world trade, especially in the lucrative black market beyond the trade laws and controls of the galactic government.

In the time of the Republic, slavery persisted in Mos Espa, though the despicable trade was outlawed elsewhere. An entire section of the city's outskirts had been transformed into a Slave Quarter. Live slaves functioned more as prestige possessions than cheap laborers, and owners parted with them only reluctantly. Slaves could even find themselves used as capital in business transactions. The true powers in control of Mos Espa were the Hutt gangsters, who found slavery a useful institution for their purposes, and Tatooine's remoteness allowed them to practice their illegal ventures.

From the Expanded Universe

Rodian refugees founded what was to become Mos Espa about 80 years before the Battle of Yavin. Among its first settlers were influential Hutts who brought with them great wealth. The influx of commercial ventures fueled Mos Espa's growth, and in a short time, it became the largest city on Tatooine and the desert planet's de facto capital. The city grew in a serpentine shape, winding its way through the Xelric Draw at the edge of the Dune Sea.

The Hutts fostered public distraction from their criminal activities by building a massive Podracing arena. With the rise of the Empire, the changing political climate caused a shift in Hutt business. Podracing waned as a public spectacle and Jabba, the most powerful Hutt on Tatooine, changed residences to be closer to Mos Eisley. As a result, Mos Espa's prominence declined in favor of Mos Eisley's growth.

Behind the Scenes

Designed around a central market place, Episode I's Mos Espa is much, much larger than Episode IV's Mos Eisley. Just outside Tozeur, Tunisia, the production crew assembled several key avenues of the marketplace, using sculpted foam and plaster around wire mesh frames to make lightweight Tatooine architecture.

On July 28, 1997, much of the Mos Espa set was dashed apart by a furious rainstorm. Producer Rick McCallum quickly rearranged the shooting schedule to take advantage of the sets that still stood while the construction crew dilligently worked to rebuild the wreckage. This skillful troubleshooting resulted in the Tatooine sequences being finished on schedule without losing a single day.