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Jennie Rhodes
Tuesday, 30 July 2024, 11:01
Walking along any secion of Andalucía’s long coastline doesn’t just offer uninterrupted views of the Mediterranean Sea, it also provides the perfect opportunity to learn about some of the history that the region’s 36 lighthouses have witnessed.
From Almeria in the east to Huelva in the west, the entire Andalusian coastline is marked by the legacy left by the Phoenicians and Greeks, to the Romans and Muslims and more recently the various sea battles including Napoleonic Wars.
While the lighthouses are too young to have seen any of those events, in the 20th century they did bear witness to the horrors of Spain’s civil war and one in particular played an active part in trying to help refugees fleeing Malaga city.
Cabo de Gata-Nijar lighthouse marks the most south-eastern point of the Spanish mainland. The road leading to the lighthouse from Almeria, passing through the villages of Retamar and Ruescas, skirts the Cabo de Gata salt flats, whose shallow waters provide food and shelter for over a hundred different species of birds, especially flamingos.
But the crowd that gathers every evening at the lighthouse comes to watch the sunset and look out from the Sirenas viewpoint over the reef of the same name, with the romantic image of the lighthouse providing the backdrop.
Mesa Roldán lighthouse is just a little further along the Almeria coast in the municipality of Carboneras. It sits next to an old watchtower that was never of much use, as its artillery, from so high up, was ineffective. However, it did eventually serve a purpose: and that was to make Meereen, the city of pyramids, which features n the sixth season of the hit series Game of Thrones.
There are only four lighthouses on the coast of Granada and Castell de Ferro and Sacratif are the ones with tales to tell.
Castell de Ferro lighthouse is built on the site of an Islamic watchtower which was reformed in the 18th century. It was restored in 1990 to house the current lighthouse.
At 237 metres above the sea and with a tower 12 metres tall, it is the second highest lighthouse on the Spanish mainland according to data collected by Mario Sanz Cruz in a work entitled Los Faros de Almería y Granada (The Lighthouses of Almeria and Granada) and by Rafael Jiménez Álvarez in the book Faros y Torres de la Costa de Granada (Lighthouses and Towers of the Granada coast).
Sacratif is the main lighthouse on the coast of Granada. It is located on the cape of the same name on Chucho hill, on a steep cliff 98 metres above the sea. It was inaugurated at the end of 1863 and began to be used with an olive oil lamp, and later a petroleum vapour lamp, until 1956, when it was modernised.
Malaga province has six lighthouses, which, since the 19th century, have been essential for navigation through this part of the Mediterranean so close to the Strait of Gibraltar.
Inaugurated in 1864, Torrox lighthouse is one of the oldest on the coast of Malaga but it is of particular interest due to the discovery of important Roman remains corresponding to the ancient city of Clavicum next to it.
When it was built in the 19th century, nobody realised at the time that the foundations of Torrox lighthouse were in fact valuable Roman remains, including a salting factory, which was later used both as a Roman bath and as a necropolis. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that the discovery was made.
On the coast of Vélez-Málaga today is the youngest lighthouse in the province of Malaga. It dates from 1976 and is located on the promenade of Torre del Mar.
In fact Torre del Mar is home to three lighthouses - grandfather, father and son, if you like. The new iconic blue and white striped can be found next to one of its predecessors on the promenade.
Not far from there, hidden among residential blocks of flats just off Avenida Toré Toré, you can see the oldest lighthouse, built in 1864 but which is logically not in use as it can no longer be seen from sea.
The square where it stands has been named in memory of the courageous lighthouse keeper who, in the early morning of 6 and 7 February 1937, as thousands of people fled Malaga during the Civil War in an episode known as the ‘Desbandá’, kept the light switched off to distract the German, Spanish and Italian warships and planes and hide the refugees. However, Anselmo Vilar García was later killed by Franco's nationalist troops when word reached them about what the lighthouse keeper had done.
Malaga city’s lighthouse was first lit in 1816 and is known locally as ‘la farola’. It is one of the few lighthouses in Spain to be more than two hundred years old. It stands tall at 33 metres high. In July 2023 it was declared an asset of cultural interest, or Bien de Interés Cultural (BIC).
Estepona’s lighthouse stands out thanks to its unusual design. It is not the original, which was built in 1861. The new one is 20 metres tall (unlike the first, which was just eight) and it is distinctive as unlike the other lighthouses in Malaga, it is octagonal and made from carved stone.
Europa Point lighthouse in Gibraltar was first lit in 1841. Interestingly the lighthouse’s navigation and other systems are monitored and controlled from Trinity House’s planning centre in the coastal town of Harwich in Essex, England.
The Cadiz coastline has the tallest lighthouse in Spain and the seventh tallest in the world: Chipiona, which was built in 1867.
Caños de Meca is home to Cape Trafalgar - the site of the famous 1805 battle. Here stands one of the most iconic lighthouses on the Andalusian coast. It started working in July 1862, almost 60 years after the naval battle.
At nearby Punta de Tarifa, Spain’s closest point to Africa, mainland Europe’s southernmost lighthouse can be found.
La Higuera lighthouse is located on the beach of Matalascañas, in the municipality of Almonte, within the Doñana National Park. Shaped like an equilateral triangle, it was built in 1994 with a 20-mile range, which serves to illuminate the wide stretch of navigation between Huelva and the mouth of the Guadalquivir river.
El Espigón lighthouse in the city of Huelva, on the Juan Carlos I breakwater (espigón), juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and is one of the last along the Andalusian coastline before reaching the border with Portugal. At 13 kilometres in length, the Juan Carlos I breakwater is the longest in Spain.
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