Brief history

The configuration of the bay of Alicante, lined with many of the winds that whip the coastline and whose sandy bottoms and algae populate the waves of storms, have fostered the establishment of human settlements from very distant times. These indigenous populations took advantage of the shelter of the Alicante roadstead, bordered to the north by Cabo de las Huertas and to the south by Santa Pola, to prosper.

Chronology of history

THE ORIGINS OF THE PORT

TOSSAL OF MANISES

MIDDLE AGES

THE RECONQUEST

KINGDOM ARAGON

MODERN AGE

PORT OF CASTILLA

THE DEVELOPMENT

THE BOARD OF WORKS

WEST SPRINGS

YEARS 60 AND 70

IBERS AND ROMANS Iberians and Romans in the coastal strip of Alicante

IBERS AND ROMANS Tossal de les Basses (712/1248)

The socio-political context could also determine the abandonment of the Iberian town, because in the context of the II Punic Wars, the Tossal de Manises, located on the opposite bank of the lagoon, was occupied. This military fort had defensive structures of superior resistance, such as walls and towers.

ALICANTE IN THE MIDDLE AGES The strategic importance of the port of Alicante in the Middle Ages

The few medieval references that have survived to our time prevent us from venturing an exact date for the beginning of the construction of a pier in Alicante. Despite this lack of documents, the few that are preserved from those remote times always highlight the port and commercial character of the city of Alicante.

RECONQUEST Castile reconquers Alicante

The last sovereign of the Muslim Kingdom of Valencia capitulated to the Aragonese King Jaime I on September 28, 1238, while the conquest of the Plaza de Alicante by the Infante D. Alfonso, later known as the Wise King, occurred in the year Hegira 644, corresponding to 1246 of the Christian calendar. The conquest of Alicante by the Castilian hosts took place thanks to the Treaty of Almizra (1244), which delimited the territorial expansion of the Aragonese crown, whose border was established in Biar and Jijona, and the Castilian, whose Kingdom of Murcia protected the town of Alicante.

MEDITERRANEAN Aragon dominates the Mediterranean

The Castilian domination of Alicante lasted exactly half a century, as the dynastic problems of the Castilian Crown after the death of Alfonso the Wise were taken advantage of by Aragon, which launched itself to conquer the Kingdom of Murcia. Thus, the Aragonese monarch Jaime II raised the senyera after the armed occupation of the castle. It was April 22, 1296 and among the most illustrious victims of that siege is the Castilian mayor, Nicolás Pérez, who died with the sword and keys to the fortress in his hands.

THE RISE The rise of Alicante in the Modern Age, from a town to a large commercial port city

The town of Alicante reached the status of city in 1490, under the reign of the monarch Fernando el Católico and only two years before the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. “The port condition of the medieval town and the wealth generated around its maritime traffic, together with the collaboration provided to the Catholic Monarchs in the course of the war with Granada, were the arguments that raised Alicante to the category of city” , according to the historian Enrique Giménez López.

MEDITERRANEAN Port of Castilla in the Mediterranean

After the decline of Valencia, the reopening of trade with Italy through the Balearic Islands favored the departure of Castilian wool fleeces; in such a way that Alicante once again became the port of Castile in the Mediterranean, since the access to the plateau through the Vinalopó valley was the one that offered the least orographic difficulties.

INFRASTRUCTURE The development of port infrastructure

In the Modern Age the port infrastructure was, in general, very scarce. Thus, the boats anchored in places close to the coast and the goods were shipped and disembarked by barges. In fact, only in places with a solid commercial flow were expensive works carried out to have a stone pier.

BOARD Constitution of the Port Works Board

Due to its poor condition, in 1795 it was proposed that they be made with consular funds; but, in 1803, a first Board of Works of the Port of Alicante was constituted under the presidency of José Sentmenat, which will have the City’s own and Excise flows. It will have to adhere to the plan presented by Manuel Mirallas in 1794 and will start with a liquid budget of 8,109,150 reals of fleece.

WEST New Poniente docks

The need to have piers with greater depth and the consolidation of the settlement of the Alicante industry in the western part of the Port, as well as an order received by a commission that studied the installation of new fishing ports in Spain, were fundamental factors that originated the drafting of the project “New Docks in Poniente and Fishing Dock for Ships”, a project that was approved in 1933. But the civil war paralyzed the execution of these projects and it was not until 1946 when the Engineer D. Pablo Suárez Sánchez launching the file with a modification of the budget. In 1947 the works of this project were awarded, which for different reasons did not finish until 1953.

YEARS 60 AND 70 Years 60 and 70

During the 60s and 70s, different works were carried out in the existing facilities with the aim of adapting them to the new maritime transport systems (Roll-On Roll-Of traffic, Containers, Perishable Products, etc…).