Moraira Castle and the watchtower

On the beach of l’Ampolla in Moraira stands a round stone fort that looks as if it does not quite belong. It is not a stage set or a replica: it is an eighteenth-century coastal fort, built because this coast was raided for decades. A couple of kilometres away, on a 165-metre cliff, a watchtower tells the same story two hundred years earlier. Together they explain why Moraira looks the way it does.

What stands on the beach

The Castell de Moraira sits at the southern end of the Platja de l’Ampolla, on a rocky point slightly above the sand. You walk straight into it on a beach stroll, and that was precisely the intention: the fort had to cover the bay and the beach.

What strikes you as you walk around it is the shape. The south side, facing the sea, is semicircular. The north side, facing the village, is straight and has a single door. In Spanish that plan is called a pata de buey, an ox hoof, and that is exactly what it is: a hoof shape with the curve towards the enemy.

The building is smaller than it looks. The total floor area is a little over two hundred square metres, divided into three naves, the middle one by far the largest. So this is not a castle in the sense of a keep with halls and towers, but a compact battery: somewhere to place guns and house a handful of men.

The walls rise in a talus, sloping outward at the base, to about ten metres, built from local stone. That slope is not aesthetics but engineering: a cannonball striking a sloping wall glances off instead of punching in.

Why it is there: the Barbary pirates

To understand the fort you need to know how unsafe this coast was. From the sixteenth century onwards the Teulada coast was raided systematically by Barbary pirates from North Africa. They came not only for loot but for people: captives were worth money.

The raids did not stop at the shoreline. Inland was not safe either; the pirates reached the town of Teulada itself. That immediately explains why Teulada’s old centre lies a few kilometres inland and why Moraira on the coast stayed small. For centuries, living by the water was simply a bad idea.

Earlier attempts to protect the coast never got off the ground. The fort that stands here now is the outcome of that: the result of plans that kept failing, until in the eighteenth century something was finally built.

Anyone sitting on a terrace at l’Ampolla today looks out over a bay at peace with itself. That is a fairly recent condition. The fort is the proof that this place was once a front line.

It is worth pausing on what such a raid meant. This was not a single night of fright. Whole families were taken and sold, and there was a brisk trade in ransoming captives. For a village like Teulada that was not an abstract risk but a recurring disaster, and it explains why so much money and effort went into coastal defence for centuries.

1742: the date in the coat of arms

Above the single door on the north side sits a royal coat of arms of the House of Bourbon. It carries the date 1742, which is probably the year the work was completed.

That date corrected a stubborn misunderstanding. For a long time the castle was assumed to be sixteenth century and the work of Juan B. Antonelli, the engineer behind many Spanish coastal defences. That is wrong. The building is eighteenth century, and a letter to the governor of Valencia shows construction was already under way in 1741. The director of works was called Nicolas Bodin.

The distinction is more than a detail for enthusiasts. A sixteenth-century watchtower and an eighteenth-century battery are two different answers to the same problem. The tower exists to see and warn; the fort exists to shoot back. Moraira has both, two hundred years apart.

How it worked as a fort

The parapet has seven openings in the form of embrasures, meant for mounting cannon. Seven pieces on a semicircular face means the fort could cover the entire bay without shifting position.

The north side, the landward side, was the weak point, and it was defended with everything available. There was a moat with a drawbridge in front of it, and in front of that a tenaza, a projecting outwork covering the gate. Look down by the door: the bridge and the excavated space beneath it are still there.

The internal division into three naves suited that function. The large central nave served as the main space, the two narrower side naves for storage and quarters. There was little comfort; this was a workplace for a small garrison, not a home.

Worth grasping: this fort worked mainly by being there. A coast with a visible battery was a coast you did not casually land on. Deterrence was the product.

From derelict post to protected monument

The castle stayed in use until the middle of the nineteenth century. That kills another story you sometimes hear on site: that the English destroyed it in the early nineteenth century. Not true, and the evidence is almost domestic. A castle keeper was still living well into the twentieth century.

What happened afterwards is the ordinary fate of such a building: it fell into disrepair and stood neglected for decades on a beach that had meanwhile become a resort. It was only restored in the early 1980s.

Since then it has been protected as a bien de interés cultural, the strongest Spanish heritage status, under reference RI-51-0004773. That means nothing may be altered without permission, and it explains why the fort still stands as itself among the modern buildings.

For anyone who likes buildings, that is the nicest observation about Moraira: the village went from fishing settlement to international resort in fifty years, and precisely that one building did not come along.

What that heritage status means in practice shows mainly in what does not happen. No terrace gets built against it, nothing is added, nothing on the facade changes. Restorations must be approved and reversible. That is why here, unlike at many Spanish coastal forts, you still see the original masonry rather than a smoothed-over reconstruction.

Inside: the exhibition on the watchtowers

The fort is not an empty building. Inside there is a permanent exhibition on the watchtowers from the time of Philip II, and an audiovisual presentation in several languages about the sea and piracy. That pairing is well chosen, because the towers and the fort belong to the same story.

Allow half an hour. It is not a large museum and it does not need to be: the value is in hearing the story while standing in the building it is about, with the bay visible through the embrasures.

The practical problem is opening. The castle is traditionally only open in July and August, and even then not all day. Current hours change from year to year, so check with the Teulada-Moraira tourist office before walking over. If you find a closed door, the walk around the outside is worth it on its own.

Outside those two months the building can only be seen from outside. That matters less than it sounds: the shape, the talus, the embrasures, the moat and the coat of arms are all visible from the outside, and that is most of the story.

The watchtower on the Cap d’Or

Just over a kilometre south of the harbour, the Punta de Moraira juts into the sea. On top, 165 metres up at the cliff edge, stands the Torre del Cap d’Or.

The tower dates from the end of the sixteenth century and belongs to the network of watchtowers built along this coast against the Barbary pirates. It is round, roughly eleven metres high and about seven metres across, with corbels along the upper rim. You cannot go inside: the entrance has been sealed.

The finest detail is how it worked. The watchers in this tower were in contact with those in the tower at La Granadella in Xàbia and on the Peñón de Ifach at Calpe. A sail on the horizon was relayed by smoke, fire or flags from cape to cape, so the interior knew within the hour that something was coming. Stand on the Cap d’Or and look north and you see at once why this point was chosen: you take in the whole curve past Xàbia.

That makes the visit worthwhile even without an interior. You are standing where, for two hundred years, somebody stood watching for something to appear.

Once up there, take a moment to orient yourself. North, the coast runs on towards the Cap de la Nau and Xàbia, with the ridge of the Montgó behind. South lies the bay of Moraira with its harbour, and in clear weather the rock of Ifach sticks out of the coastline like a separate cone. Once you have picked out the three points, the system explains itself.

Another thing you notice: the tower does not stand on the very highest point of the cape but slightly below it on the seaward side. That is no accident. A little lower means less chance of sitting in cloud or haze, and a better view of what is passing close inshore. The builders thought in sightlines, not in views.

The network of towers along this coast

The tower on the Cap d’Or does not stand alone. It is part of a chain laid out along the Valencian coast in the time of Philip II, and that chain is exactly the subject of the exhibition in the castle.

The idea behind it was simple and effective. Put a tower with a few watchers on every cape, make sure each tower can see the next, and you have a warning system faster than a rider. Smoke by day, fire by night. A sail spotted at the Cap d’Or was known in Xàbia and Calpe before long.

That also explains the siting. The towers stand not where the view is prettiest but where the sightline to the neighbours is best. The Cap d’Or sits precisely between La Granadella in Xàbia and the Peñón de Ifach at Calpe, and on a clear day from the summit you see why that works.

What the system could not do was defend. A watchtower with a few men in it does not stop a landing; it buys the population time to get inland. Only with batteries like Moraira’s, two hundred years later, did something arrive that could shoot back. The two structures you see here stand for two different strategies: warn early, and much later, hold your ground.

Once you have an eye for them, there are more along this whole coast. They are almost all round, almost all on a cape, and recognisable by those same corbels along the upper rim.

The walk up: SL-CV 51

A waymarked path leads to the tower, the SL-CV 51, starting at the beach of El Portet. The climb is a little over a kilometre, just over three there and back. It is an easy route, perfectly doable with children who are used to an hour on their feet.

The path climbs steadily along the flank of the cape, with the bay dropping away below you. On the way you look out over El Portet and, in clear weather, as far as the Peñón de Ifach in the distance. The surface is stone and gravel, so shoes with grip are no luxury. Do not do it in flip-flops, however short it is.

Go early or late. There is almost no shade on the way and the southern slope catches the full sun; between midday and four in summer it is no fun. Early morning is cooler, quieter and the light on the coast is at its best.

Take water. There is nothing up top, no tap, no bar, no shade. Half a litre per person is the minimum in warm weather, and more with children.

The Cova de la Cendra

On the same peninsula lies a site far less known than the tower and archaeologically far more important: the Cova de la Cendra. It is one of the most significant Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites in the western Mediterranean.

That is not local exaggeration. In caves like this, the shift from hunting and gathering to farming sits in layers in the ground, and here those layers are well preserved. For archaeologists that makes the Marina Alta a key area for the question of how farming spread along the Mediterranean.

You reach the cave by the same path towards the tower, followed by a steep stairway down. At the bottom you enter a large cavity; a second, underground chamber is closed off by a gate. That gate is there for a reason: this is a site, not an attraction.

If you take the stairs, take the descent seriously. It is steep and the steps are uneven. With small children or in wet weather you are better off skipping it and sticking to the tower.

With children, and what to arrange

Both visits work with children, but they ask different things. The castle is short and safe: you walk around it, look out to sea through the embrasures, and if it is open you see the exhibition inside. For a six-year-old that is fifteen minutes; for a ten-year-old with an interest in pirates, considerably longer.

The walk to the tower is another matter. Just over three kilometres there and back is entirely doable, but the path runs along the edge of a 165-metre cliff. There is no railing everywhere and there are stretches where you want a child by the hand. Do not do it with a child who does not yet listen well, and certainly not in strong wind.

What to arrange: water, shoes with grip, a hat and sunscreen. What you do not need to arrange: a ticket for the tower, because you cannot go in. For the castle, opening hours and any entry fee vary by season; ask the tourist office rather than relying on an old listing online.

Dogs can come on the walk, on a lead. On the beach by the castle the usual high-season dog restrictions apply, so do not count on it between June and September.

Practicalities: getting there, parking, combining

The castle stands on the Platja de l’Ampolla, within walking distance of Moraira’s centre and harbour. Park in the village rather than right by the fort; in summer that is hopeless anyway. Allow five to ten minutes on foot from a space further out.

For the tower you drive to El Portet and park there. It is a small area with limited space, so in July and August arriving early is the only workable strategy. Out of season you park without a thought.

The two combine neatly into a morning. Start with the walk to the tower while it is still cool, then drive or walk to the castle, and finish on a terrace by the harbour. That way you cover the whole story of this coast in half a day, from the sixteenth-century warning to the eighteenth-century battery.

If you want more of this kind of place: the tower on the Peñón de Ifach at Calpe belonged to the same warning network, and the climb up there is a good deal tougher than this one. And to get to know the village itself: Teulada-Moraira has its own wine festival in September.

The best time to see the castle is late afternoon. The sun is then in the west and the light rakes across the south face, which is when you really see the masonry and the talus. In the morning the building is backlit from the beach. If you would rather photograph it without people, come out of season: in July and August the beach stays full into the evening.

Outside summer this is a more pleasant outing anyway. The fort is there all year, the walk to the tower is at its best in spring and autumn, and parking at El Portet is no problem at all. February to May and October to November are the best months for a day like this on this coast.

About the authorMilo Schuijt

Milo Schuijt is an entrepreneur and DJ on the Costa Blanca. He writes about the places where he lives, works and plays: from beach bars to the housing market.