Andrés Martínez-Medina

La frontera marítima fortificada: de la vigilancia a la señalización (XVI-XIX)

During the 16th century an ambitious political programme for building towers and forts bordering the Spanish Empire’s littoral, to protect it, is materialised. This sighting network over the sea horizon had the essential mission of detecting the presence of vessels that supposed a threat. The network was organised through the strategic arrangement of watchtowers taking profit of the geographical features in the topography so that they could communicate among them with a system of visual signs. The virtual union of the stated settlements defined the fortified maritime borderline. At the same time, this network of sentinels was reinforced (in certain settlements) by the construction of fortifications that acted like centres of data reception and supplied the necessary personnel for detection and transmission. So, this mesh was established by observation points (watchtowers) and information and defense centres (fortifications) to make the news arrive to the decision centres. The present communication aims to demonstrate this military strategy providing the inventory of all defensive architectures that marked this limit between the Segura river mouth until the Huertas cape and that these are spotted from the ‘Flat’ island (later Nueva Tabarca). A riverside geography of approximately 30 km long where 3 fortifications and 7 towers of diverse typologies successively took place. Among the most relevant documents of this research, we could mention the plans of the fortifycations in Guardamar and Santa Pola from the 16th century (drawn in the 18th). For this research, drawings of towers made by the Ministry of Public Works at the end of the 19th century are also important; these documents show the new military tactics, neither for attack neither for defense. At most, they replaced for maritime lighthouses for signage and help for navigation while the others towers were abandoned.

Muro Mediterráneo versus movimiento moderno

A decade before there was getting up the Atlantic Wall, there was executed a system of defenses along the Mediterranean coast in Spain (1936-39). The recovery of the same constructions (both of his graphical documents) and his putting in value it can help to consolidate an own memory of the 20th century. This work considers to inventory, to measure and to draw the planes of these architectures to fix the memory that is diluted by the erosion of the time. These military defenses place in many borders: are these defenses properly architecture or are these industrial pieces? Are these a modern architecture? These are walking between two worlds: the one that designs lightweight, flexible and outdated and another that builds heavy, rigid and eternal works. These are walking between two epochs too: the one that perpetuates the epic acts in opposite to the one that shows the disasters. Space, time and matter. They are the most modern ruins of our history built with concrete and disguised in the topography: temples and tombs at the same time. In this reconstruction of the memory, there turns out to be crucial the graphical restitution which is the home of knowledge.

From the Architecture Treatises to the Portfolio: The Etchings of Piranesi

Architectural treatises of the 15th–16th centuries managed to build a uniform and hegemonic theoretical corpus in a short period of time thanks to the invention of the printing press, which allowed the diffusion of copies throughout Europe as the ‘Gutenberg galaxy’ began its expansion. The first treatises were scarcely illustrated, but the presence of images increased with the development, at the same time, of printing techniques, from the replacement of wood-block printing techniques to the perfection of engravings on metal plates and etchings. A particular case are the Piranesi etchings depicting the Roman ruins, on the one hand, and projecting imagined or fantastic architecture within his carceri, illustrating unparalleled interiors, on the other. These portfolios of plates put in crisis the authority of text; replacing it for a culture of the image. The advance of etching techniques and the extraordinary quality of those made by Piranesi contributed to the success of his proposals in the definition of a drawn ideology and in the insertion of his standpoints in the architectural debate of the eighteen century. Enlightenment is witness to the decline of the classicist unitary theories that were replaced by a diversity of interests that, in part, were the result of a greater diffusion of prints, plates and drawings substituting written texts as sources of architectural invention. This reflection is closed with the latest autograph portfolio that would revolutionise the foundations of architecture at the moment in which the influence of drawings began their decline due to the possibilities that photography would deliver as a new means of disseminating architecture in professional journals in the era of the mass-media.

Rehabilitating, Repairing And Restoring Against Demolishing, Tearing Down And Destroying: The Recovery Of The Military Fort For The Santa Pola Town Museum

This communication develops the process of interventions of the Renaissance fortress of a new plant built in 1554–57 in Santa Pola. It is one of the earliest examples built with reference to military architecture theoretical treaties (XV– XVI) and best preserved. The study runs its own story from its initial military use, through the use of civil equipment until the final cultural and Museum Center. First, the project of Italian origin is examined and its use as barracks for troops for a duration of three centuries (1557–1850), pointing out the architectural constants of war machinery in a defense position and its origin as a rainwater collector and cistern: a perfect square with two bastions in which a plan of the uprising is preserved (1778). Secondly, we study the changes in the mentioned architecture throughout a century and a half (1850–1990) after its change of ownership (from the state to the municipality), and as a result of the new use as a city hall and public endowment: a market and health and leisure centre, which meant the demolition of defensive elements and the opening up to the outside of the inner parade ground. And thirdly, the new transfer of the municipal offices brings in the beginning of a project of transformations (1990– 2015) that retrieves the demolished elements at the same time as it assigns the entire fort for a cultural centre: exhibition, research and history museum, promoting the identity between the citizens and the building which stands in the foundations of their city. The conclusions take us through an interesting route that goes from the approach of defensive tactics, its use as ad ministrative headquarters to the current cultural policy of preservation. In addition, all the known plans of the fort are recovered (of military, civil and cultural use), some

Muro Mediterráneo: búnkeres y baterías para la defensa del litoral (1936-1939)

The Mediterranean wall, which is a collection of defensive constructions along the coast, was built during the Spanish War (1936-39) to prevent enemy attacks. Its called this way like the Atlantic Wall, which was built after the Second World War. These group of buildings consist of batteries, bunkers and barracks placed along the coastline, sometimes next to another kind of infrastructure. Its location (typical of a military strategy) and its peculiar morphology are like another ones: the historical watchtowers ones. They were built by the Kingdom of Spain in the same geography four centuries earlier although, in our case, the buildings are updated to the conditions of contemporary wars: camouflage against air raids. A collection of anti-aircraft devices, placed along the coast since the late 1937, were risen following the instructions of the Valencian State to defend both citizens and cities from the aviations bombings. The following military settlements, organized from North to South, are part of the most relevant ones of the coast of Alicante: the Denia and Javea ones, the North of Alicante and Southwest of Alicante ones, the Portichol one, the Galvanys Clot one and, finally, the Cape and Bay of Santa Pola ones. Remains of more than 60 architectural elements, that document the first concretes ruins, are still there. This paper tries to document all of them (providing their location, their morphological genealogy and including some drawings of the current state) to contribute to their revaluation and to help to their necessary protection. They are a legacy of architectural heritage which consolidates and increases the memory of our culture.