1333 - Puerta de Algeciras - The other Puerta de Mar
Abu l Hasan and Enrique de Guzman - Giovanni Battista Calvi and Jacome Pelearo Fratin
Battista Antonelli and Tiburcio Spanochi
This was yet another medieval sea gate running through the old south-western, Moorish line wall defences built by Abu l Hasan 1 in 1333. Its name comes from the fact that it was facing the Spanish town of the same name just across the Bay. In the early 17th century it was described as an elegantly constructed affair with a coat of arms depicting a key very similar to that found on another gate on the northern walls of the town called La Puerta de Granada. 2 ( see LINK )
La Puerta de Algeciras is mentioned in 1469 in a decree issued by Enrique IV of Castile in which he concedes Gibraltar to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Enrique de Guzman. 3 It reinforces the suggestion that the gate may have been of Moorish origin.
Possible location of Puerta de Algeciras.
The gate was destroyed - and perhaps rebuilt in another guise - in the 16th century during the construction of Charles V's Wall by Italian engineers, 4 all of which suggests that its original position was not too far distant from where Ragged Staff Gate ( see LINK ) is today.
Location of a gate labelled - perhaps erroneously - as Puerta de Mar with a small adjoining jetty which is more or less in the same place as Ragged Staff. The Baluarte del Rosario is missing ( 1747 - Unknown )
Nevertheless in a map which the Spanish historian Ángel J Sáez Rodríguez includes in one of his essays for the Almoraima magazine, the Puerta de Algeciras appears as well to the south of the suggested locations given above.
Moorish Gibraltar ( Ángel J Sáez Rodríguez )