The Crown of Aragon was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona and ended as a consequence of the War of the Spanish Succession. At the height of its power in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Crown of Aragon was a thalassocracy controlling a large portion of present-day eastern Spain, parts of what is now southern France, and a Mediterranean empire which included the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Southern Italy and parts of Greece.
Juan Bautista de Toledo was a Spanish architect. He was educated in Italy, in the Italian High Renaissance. As many Italian renaissance architects, he had experience in both architecture and military and civil public works. Born, either in Toledo or in Madrid around 1515. He died on 19 May 1567 in Madrid, and was buried in Madrid in the choir of the primitive “Convento de Santo Tomás, Iglesia de la Santa Cruz”.
Admiral Manuel de la Cámara y Livermoore was a Spanish naval officer. He saw service in many of Spain′s wars of the second half of the nineteenth century and is most notable for commanding a relief squadron that made an abortive attempt to relieve Spanish forces in the Philippine Islands during the Spanish–American War.
Pablo de Hita y Salazar was a Spanish military officer who served as governor of Spanish Florida from 1675 to 1680. The territory at the time stretched from current-day Florida west to Texas and north to South Carolina. He was best known for his work devoted to construction of the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, the capital of La Florida.
The Castle/Fortress of Almeida is a castle situated in the civil parish of Almeida, in the municipality of Almeida in the Portuguese district of Guarda, in the former-northwestern province of Beira Alta. It was constructed in this region due to its significant strategic importance, due to its close proximity to the border between Portugal and Spain. It is classified as a National Monument.
Flat Bastion Road is a road in Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula. The road runs north–south, providing views of the city and Bay of Gibraltar. Previously known in Spanish as Senda del Moro, the traditional Llanito name for the road is Cuesta de Mr. Bourne.
Flat Bastion is a bastion which projects southward from the Charles V Wall in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Once known as the St. Jago's Bastion or the Baluarte de Santiago in Spanish, the fortification was built by the Spanish in the mid 16th century and formed part of the southern defences of the city of Gibraltar, together with Charles V Wall, Southport Gates, Southport Ditch, and South Bastion. In 1859, six guns, four 12-pounders and two 12-pound carronades, were installed on the bastion, and four years later, five 32-pounders were mounted on the fortification.
The Southport Gates are three city gates in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. They are located in the Charles V Wall, one of the 16th century fortifications of Gibraltar. The gates are clustered together, with the South Bastion to the west, and the Trafalgar Cemetery to the east. The first and second Southport Gates were constructed at present day Trafalgar Road in 1552 and 1883, respectively. The third gate, Referendum Gate, is the widest of the three and was constructed in 1967 at Main Street, immediately west of the first two gates. The Southport Gates are listed with the Gibraltar Heritage Trust.
The Charles V Wall is a 16th-century defensive curtain wall that forms part of the fortifications of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Originally called Muralla de San Benito, it was built in 1540 and strengthened in 1552 by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The wall remains largely intact and extends from South Bastion, which was once at the water's edge in the harbour, to the top ridge of the Rock of Gibraltar.
The South Bastion was part of the fortifications of Gibraltar, protecting the western base of the Charles V Wall. It was originally built by Spanish military engineers, later improved by the British. The South Bastion stands at the south end of the Line Wall Curtain which defends the town from attack from the Bay of Gibraltar. Another curtain wall runs east from the bastion to the base of a precipice. This wall is pierced by the Southport Gates, guarded by the South Bastion and the Flat Bastion on either side.
Giovan Giacomo Paleari Fratino (1520–1586), known as El Fratin or Il Fratino, was a military engineer who served the Spanish Emperor Charles V, and then his son Philip II of Spain. He is known for having designed the first Martello tower as well as many other fortifications.
The Moorish Wall, also known as the Philip II Wall and formerly the Muralla de San Reymondo is a defensive curtain wall built in the 16th century that formed part of the southern fortifications of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It was completed by 1575. The wall ran from the top of a steep cliff above the lower section of the Charles V Wall up the slope of the Rock of Gibraltar to its crest, north of the upper section of the Charles V Wall and is now within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve.
Tiburzio Spannocchi (1541–1609) was "king's engineer" to Philip II of Spain and subsequently to Philip III of Spain. He was named "Chief Engineer" in 1601.
The North Bastion, formerly the Baluarte San Pablo was part of the fortifications of Gibraltar, in the north of the peninsula, protecting the town against attack from the mainland of Spain. The bastion was based on the older Giralda tower, built in 1309. The bastion, with a mole that extended into the Bay of Gibraltar to the west and a curtain wall stretching to the Rock of Gibraltar on its east, was a key element in the defenses of the peninsula. After the British took Gibraltar in 1704 they further strengthened these fortifications, flooding the land in front and turning the curtain wall into the Grand Battery.
The siege of Algeciras (1342–1344) was undertaken during the Reconquest of Spain by the Castillian forces of Alfonso XI assisted by the fleets of the Kingdom of Aragon and the Republic of Genoa. The objective was to capture the Muslim city of Al-Jazeera Al-Khadra, called Algeciras by Christians. The city was the capital and the main port of the European territory of the Marinid Empire.
The siege of Algeciras (1369) was undertaken during the period of the Reconquest of Spain by Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada to reclaim the city of Al-Hadra Al-Yazirat, called Algeciras by the Christians, in the Kingdom of Castile. The siege lasted just three days, and the sultan was victorious. The Muslims thus regained a major city which had been in Castilian hands since Alfonso XI of Castile took it from the Moroccans after the long 1342–1344 siege. Ten years after the capture of the city, in 1379 the sultan of Granada decided to completely destroy the city to prevent it falling into Christian hands. It was impossible to defend the place at a time when the Muslim kings of the Iberian Peninsula had lost much of military power they enjoyed in earlier centuries.
The Gibraltar peninsula, located at the far southern end of Iberia, has great strategic importance as a result of its position by the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. It has repeatedly been contested between European and North African powers and has endured fourteen sieges since it was first settled in the 11th century. The peninsula's occupants – Moors, Spanish, and British – have built successive layers of fortifications and defences including walls, bastions, casemates, gun batteries, magazines, tunnels and galleries. At their peak in 1865, the fortifications housed around 681 guns mounted in 110 batteries and positions, guarding all land and sea approaches to Gibraltar. The fortifications continued to be in military use until as late as the 1970s and by the time tunnelling ceased in the late 1960s, over 34 miles (55 km) of galleries had been dug in an area of only 2.6 square miles (6.7 km2).
In Colonial times the Spanish Empire diverted significant resources to fortify the Chilean coast as a consequence of Dutch and English raids. During the 16th century the Spanish strategy was to complement the fortification work in its Caribbean ports with forts in the Strait of Magellan. As attempts at settling and fortifying the Strait of Magellan were abandoned the Spanish began to fortify the Captaincy General of Chile and other parts of the west coast of the Americas. The coastal fortifications and defense system was at its peak in the mid-18th century.
The Baluarte de Santo Domingo is a bastion located in Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia. The bastion of Santo Domingo has a particular importance, since it is the origin of the construction of the city walls of Cartagena de Indias in the early 17th century. This work of fortification was conceived around 1602 by the engineer Battista Antonelli and his nephew Cristóbal de Roda, also engineer, who decided to build it on the avenue through which the pirate Francis Drake had penetrated, in 1586.
