Carlos Perez Marin

One day in April 2002, Adolfo Hernández Lafuente called me by phone to meet the next day, in the afternoon, at the Parador La Muralla; the director was going to show him rooms that were not open to guests. Despite knowing the gardens, the swimming pool, the commercial gallery (specifically the Nakasha record store), the vaults and even La Bandera bastion (when the nightclub called El Candelero or Muralla Club was still operating), I did not want to spend the opportunity to discover the Coraza Alta bastion that Adolfo mentioned to me in the telephone conversation, although it was not going to be the only space that we were going to visit.

The next day Adolfo was waiting for me in the lobby of the Parador and moments later the director approached us, after crossing the commercial gallery and crossing the garden, we arrived at the door that gave access to the rooms of the vaults of the old Artillery Park. I hadn't been there for a long time but the vault impressed me as if it were the first time I visited it, a vault that is the only one that maintains its original volume (apart from those of the discotheque), since an intermediate floor has not been built as in the others.

The director walked into the vault and turned left, leading us down a long corridor until he stopped by a wooden door that was on the opposite side of the rooms, on the right side of the corridor, where there was no other gap. Although the door was identical to the one to the rooms, it was under an arch that had been closed up and that fact made me understand that we were not going to enter a room, not even the Coraza Alta bastion, since the corridor continued and the access was supposed to be at the end of it. As the director tried to open the door, my impatience accelerated before the uncertainty of what we were going to find. Once inside, I was fascinated by a space crowned by a dome, of the rest little could be guessed because of the dim light and because it was full of abandoned objects; chairs, tables, lamps, beds... it was defective furniture from the hotel and it seemed as if that room had been used as a storage room, which was doubly strange, due to the dimensions and the corrugated rustic cement coating, as if it would have had another more worthy use previously; the director told us that this room had been used to play billiards during the first years of the hotel. As I moved between the stacked furniture I could see the natural light that entered horizontally through the opposite wall from the entrance and that came from a tiny window at the end of a narrow gallery. Suddenly, that light became a target since it was going to serve as a reference to know where we were in relation to the Royal Walls. Before reaching the end of the gallery excavated in the wall (it had no lining at all) I could already guess that I was heading towards the moat thanks to the noise of the boats that were sailing through it at that very moment. I got an idea of ​​the position of that window using the counterscarp and the hornwork of the Valenciana front as a reference because an anti-pigeon metal mesh prevented me from sticking my head out and locating myself with the two bastions. I told myself that after the visit I would go to the other side of the moat to see the location of that window and better understand where that space was, which did not correspond to any element visible from the outside as it did with the bastions. I went back inside to explore the vaulted space and especially the associated rooms on the two sides. Although on the left I could see two arches that preceded two rooms, I did not go in as they were completely dark and full of objects, which could also be dangerous, such as the rock wool used in insulation, however, on the opposite side, an opening in the wall gave access to a staircase and I automatically imagined that it might lead me to another even more hidden place or to a secret exit on the roof. Again I encountered the difficulty of walking between objects and in the dark. Suddenly I bumped into one of them causing a truly spectacular noise. Without seeing exactly what it had hit me with, I immediately knew what it could be from the metallic sound and its size.

Since I finished my architecture studies in 1997, one of the buildings that I always showed my fellow architects who came to visit Ceuta was the entrance and lobby of the Parador, a fairly imposing complex from the outside that materially decomposes itself until reaching the swimming pool, but there was one even more interesting, the dining room or party room, a pleasant space thanks to its flexibility, its height, the overhead light filtered by the blue glazed ceramics that gave it a solid and protective appearance against the sun from the exterior, a space that, however, thanks to its perimeter glass facades, allowed the pool gardens to be incorporated inside. The dining room had another element that had always been fascinating to me, the lamps that hung from the roof as if they were a contemporary art installation, the same luminaires that were used (although they were out of scale) in the hotel bar, a closeness that it allowed a better appreciation of the (Moroccan) craftsmanship behind the lamps and that the hotel's architect, Carlos Picardo, had decided to incorporate into his project.

That fascination between tradition and contemporaneity, between architecture and art, was what allowed me, as soon as I heard the noise caused by my foot going up the stairs and hitting the object, to know that it was one of the lamps that I liked so much. Bending down I could see that the lamp was broken, separated into two pieces and the dirt had turned it into a black object, nothing to do with the shiny metal that dominated both the bar and the dining room. When the director and Adolfo asked me if I was alright, I told them not to worry and they understood when they saw me coming down the stairs with the lamp in my hands. I asked the director what they were going to do with all those objects and he told me that one day they would have to empty the room and throw everything away in order to put that space to use, even if it was only for hotel guests. Faced with the fate that awaited what, for me, was a work of art, I asked him if he could take it with me and he said yes. At that moment my curiosity to continue climbing those stairs or to discover the other rooms disappeared, I had already found a treasure so I left it next to the door where I would pick it up after finishing the visit. Months later I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't found that lamp, would I have continued investigating in the other rooms?

After going out again to the corridor of the rooms we headed, this time yes, to the end, where a new door with identical characteristics and in the same wall, was going to take us to the interior of the Coraza Alta bastion. Efforts to remember what El Candelero was like were of little use, which I was lucky enough to enter after the dinner with my fellow architects organised in January 1998, but I did remember a series of parallel vaults that acted as a prelude to the bastion to which went down a ramp to save a drop of only 60 cm. Therefore, when the director opened the door and I saw a ramp-staircase with a slope close to 35%, I realised that the space I was going to enter had nothing to do with the opposite bastion.

To begin with, it was much more regular inside, with two clear perpendicular axes and no turns at the ends. It also highlighted the opening to the open sky that the Bandera bastion did not have and a single open gun emplacement in the orillon. I had a strange temporary sensation, while the other bastion remained in our memory for having been open until a few years before, in Coraza Alta time seemed as if it had stopped in 1967, the year the Parador was completed. The stockpiles of leftover materials made during the execution could still be seen, such as the different pieces of glazed ceramic used to separate the terraces from the vaults and in the solar protection of the dining room. I didn't understand how such a fantastic space hadn't been conditioned; thorough cleaning, proper sealing of gaps to prevent pigeons from entering, and lighting would have been more than enough to use it, if only for a visit. In any case, I had fulfilled one of my dreams, to enter a space that was, and unfortunately still is, inaccessible to the public.

When we left the hotel Adolfo and I couldn't avoid to exchange our feelings after the visit, on the one hand our happiness was palpable for having visited the Royal Walls from the inside, on the other we felt sadness when we saw what were the uses that the Parador gave to a Bien de Interés Cultural (a category of the heritage register in Spain). In a certain way, the director wanted to incorporate them into the common spaces of the hotel, but Paradores did not give him a budget for the works. We discussed what we could do to get the local administration to intervene and it occurred to us, to begin with, that heritage experts could carry out the same visit that we had just made, so that together we could exert pressure. Since at that time we were already working on the First Symposium on Ceuta Fortification that we were going to organise from the Foro del Estrecho Foundation at the end of June, we saw the possibility of including a visit with the participants in the programme, so the day after Adolfo transmitted the idea to the hotel manager and he agreed that we could enter the room with the dome, the bastions and the roof of the Royal Wall again in June.

From June the 27th to the 28th 2002, the Foro del Estrecho Foundation organised the First Sympusium on Fortifications, in which a series of conferences and round tables were scheduled in the assembly hall of the Revellín Museum with the participation of historians, archaeologists and architects from the city and the Peninsula such as Fernando Villada Paredes, José Manuel Hita Ruiz, Carlos Gozalbes Cravioto, José Hernández Palomo, Juan Bautista Vilar, Antonio Bravo Nieto, Aureliano Gómez Vizcaíno, José Luis Gómez Barceló, Adolfo Hernández, Juan Miguel Hernández León and Carlos Pérez Marín.

The program included a guided tour of the Royal Walls on the morning of the 28th. Participants and attendees formed a group of about 30 people. After touring the parade ground and receiving explanations of the restorations and rehabilitations carried out in recent years of the different defensive elements, we moved to the hotel to first visit the Bandera bastion, which for a couple of years had remained closed after the cessation of activity of the Muralla Club cocktail bar. The works carried out during the time the nightclub was in operation made it impossible to observe the construction elements, except for the arches inside the bastion and the embrasure open to the navigable moat. Later we went to the rooms that occupied the vaults of the old Artillery Park. I could not help but compare the visit made months before in which only three people walked the corridors, now the murmur that emanated from the compact group was occupying the entire space, conversations related to the latest conferences could be guessed but a certain restlessness or excitement was noticeable by those who had worked on the Royal Walls but had not had the opportunity to visit the bastion of the Coraza Alta, much less that room full of furniture and crowned by a dome from where one could look into the moat through a hole in the wall, which was perceptible from the other side but which had never been accessed and whose way of reaching it was unknown, and of course, no one could imagine the dimensions of the space that was hidden behind that small window. Arriving at the door of the "storage room", the murmur became deafening, because of the dimensions of the corridor, also because of the impatience of the researchers. Upon entering, the group began to disperse among the furniture and the different rooms, the dome and the window over the moat being the elements that aroused the most curiosity, although it must be recognised that the dirt, the lack of light, the multitude of objects and people and the lack of time, all this meant that we did not stay long. Little by little we left the "room" and the silence began to recover its place, I stayed almost until the end observing the dome because its construction system (bricks could be guessed in the highest part), dimensions and proportions did not correspond to a construction from the same period as the 18th century vaults of the Artillery Park, at least that was my opinion at the time.

As time was pressing, in the end we all went to the end of the corridor, where an even more spectacular space awaited us due to its volume and dimensions. I had not realised that the slope of the ramp-staircase and the humidity caused by the environment and the leaks could be dangerous for people of a certain age who accompanied us, that made the descent slower and almost one by one. As we reached the lowest point, the gesture was repeated over and over again, everyone looked up, amased at the height and the opening of the roof that allowed us to get a clearer idea of ​​the scale of the place. The diaphanous space helped the group to wander around, observing the details of the interior walls, the structure, the roof, the hole that overlooked the moat... I appreciated, in the faces and comments of the participants, the astonishment and disbelief for keeping the bastion closed to the public with all the possibilities it offered and without great economic cost.

We had to continue because the visit did not end there, we still had to go up to the roof of the Royal Walls. In the same way that the descent took place, we began the ascent to the corridor with parsimony, again in line one by one. Almost at the end of the ramp, José Luis Gómez Barceló made me, and those around him, pay attention to a detail about the vault that covered that section:

- Look Carlos, a hole for the portcullis.

It seemed logical that there was the possibility of shutting down tightly and preventing access to the interior of the wall in the event that they had taken the bastion from the moat, through the large gap that still exists, Aureliano Gómez Vizcaíno, like a good artilleryman, commented it might be a smoke vent intended for artillery pieces, but it didn't appear to be open at the top. It seemed strange to me that they needed so much width for a portcullis and that it was so high for a passage barely 3 meters high. Due to the lack of lighting I took out my small Fuji digital camera to use the flash as a torch. Shooting several photos I was confirmed as to the height because it looked as if it reached the roof, but my doubts were increased because one side was perfectly rigged while the other had a rough finish. At one point, Antonio Rodríguez, the Parador's maintenance person who accompanied us and who had opened the different doors for us, told us to wait a while because he was going to bring us a flashlight. While we exchanged impressions, standing in the middle of the ramp, we created a stopper because it was difficult to get past us to go out into the corridor, also because other people joined the conversation (Fernando Villada, José Manuel Hita) or paid attention to it (José Pedro Pedrajas, José María Hernández). Antonio arrived with the flashlight and I got ready to illuminate those walls. After a first tour, I turned off the flashlight and turned to my right, where Fernando and José Manuel kept looking at each other without saying anything, motionless, but their facial expressions told me that something was happening.

- What's happening?
- Look at the wall, what are the stone bond like? - Fernando told me. I went back to illuminate the wall and answered.
- stretchers and double headers.
- Who builds like that? Jose Manuel replied.
- It is not possible
- That's what we two are saying to each other.

Until then, the only known Umayyad remains of a certain size in Ceuta were the tower that was inside the Real Club Naútico CAS building in the marina (which was no more than three meters wide and four meters high) and the curtain wall that appeared next to the Late Roman Basilica (barely a meter and a half high), in this case we were talking about a height of more than 10 meters (later we learned it was 12.64 m).

Fernando decided to continue with the planned program, emphasising that we would return more calmly after a few days, after all, together with Adolfo, they were the ones who led the visit and it remained to go up to the roof of the walls, which was generally inaccessible, except for the soldiers of the General Command who were in charge of lowering the flag and that would allow us to observe from another perspective, not only the Royal Walls but the city, the Strait and the southern bay.

Finding myself with a flashlight in my hands and since everyone had already gone out to the garden to head to the roof, I told José Pedro that if there was caliphal curtain wall here, it would be logical if it continued towards the other bastion and therefore it could appeared in the room that we had previously visited; I had to go back to the dome. I asked Antonio if he could open the “storage room” for us again because we wanted to check some things with the flashlight and he told us that there was no problem. José María Hernández and José Manuel Hita followed us and once inside, I dedicated myself to exploring the associated rooms, which were totally dark. I started with the first one on the right, but its dimensions (despite its height) didn't really catch my attention. Then I went to another adjoining space that still had the same cement cladding but whose height was reduced, crowned by a groined vault. I noticed the semicircular arch that was on one side and the space behind it, completely dark, full of objects and construction materials. It was a kind of residual local whose interior level was a meter and a half higher, which made access difficult.

The curiosity was such that I decided to go up and go inside, despite my fear of touching the rock wool due to the effects it had in contact with the skin. Once inside, not without effort, I stood up looking at the voussoirs of the arch, preparing to inspect the lining. When I turned on the flashlight and shined it on the left abutment, I couldn't believe it as I continued along the arch to the keystone and without stopping until I reached the opposite abutment. There was no cement coating, but the same coquina stone that we had seen on the way up to the Coraza Alta bastion but with a series of moldings, that is to say, I was in front of what seemed to be a gate built by the Umayyads. I went through the arch again with the flashlight, again and again it was as if a stone arch was drawn in the air that disappeared in the dark when the flashlight did not illuminate it, as if it were the special effects of a movie. With a trembling voice, I warned those who had returned with me to the “storage room”:

- Come, come, there is a caliphal arch in here!

The first to come inside was José Pedro and he couldn't believe it either, while the others arrived and tried to get up I had already jumped and ran away, I had to warn the others. My heart was beating faster than a jog race could provoke, but what I just saw was completely unexpected, I was looking for a curtain wall and yet I had come across a complete arch. I thought the group would still go through the gardens, but when I came out of the vaults and couldn't find them, I knew I had to continue my run to the roof, trying not to alarm the guests who were enjoying the sun and the pool. After reaching the roof and locating Fernando, he looked at me almost scared.

- What's up Carlos, why are you running?
Breathing heavily, I replied.
- Come Fernando, we have discovered an Umayyad gate.
- Carlos, stop fooling around, it's very late, we still have to finish the visit to the roof and they're already waiting for us to eat downstairs.
I looked into his eyes and told him very seriously.
- Fernando come with me right now.

At that moment, he left the group and accompanied me to the old billiard room where Antonio, José Pedro, José Manuel and José María were waiting, whose happy faces were obvious. Fernando went to José Manuel and asked him what was happening and he answered.

- Get in there with the flashlight.

Little by little, more participants of the visit arrived and they all agreed on the same thing when they saw how that arch was executed and how it had a continuation on both sides, one of them with a curtain wall built with the same type of coquina stone; it was an exit gate from the city. While some researchers exchanged opinions, we began to discuss under the dome the next steps we had to take, because that discovery had a scope beyond our city; before convening a press conference we would have to request an audience with the president of the City to explain the scope of the discovery; It would be necessary to take photographs and make a plan to accompany the report that José Luis Gómez Barceló was going to send to the Royal Academy of History... Once outside we headed towards the hotel terrace to have lunch, but on one of my trips and comings, I crossed paths with the Government Delegate several times in the hall, before so much movement he asked me:

- Carlos, what happens that I see you so upset?
- We have just discovered a gate from the Caliphate period, possibly the gateway to the city during the 10th century.

At that moment I didn't pay attention to his answer, it was later during the meal and a little calmer, and I couldn't believe it because he told me:

- Be careful when announcing the discovery because you are going to give Morocco arguments to claim the city.

I should have had more reflections and answered that the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba was of Syrian origin and its enemies were precisely those who occupied the territories of what is now Morocco, so instead of hiding the discovery, it had to be reported.

We couldn't prolong the after-dinner conversation because we still had two scheduled conferences left, but the joy was immense, we were aware of having lived a unique moment and we had also shared it with multiple friends from other cities, all of them fortifications lovers.

The next day we were received by the president of the City, Juan Jesús Vivas, and we (Adolfo, Fernando, José Luis and I) tried to explain the importance of what was discovered, emphasising that it was a historical fact and that it did not happen every day, neither in Ceuta nor in the world. We also conveyed to him the difficulties that its study would entail, since it was inside the Parador and did not have an independent access, so we were surely going to encounter a double obstacle. However, Adolfo insisted on the administrative tools that the City Council had, since the cultural powers had been transferred and the Royal Walls were classified as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC), so it was the Autonomous City that held the power to decide how to act and when, Paradores, although it depended on the General Directorate of State Heritage, could not oppose it. However, we all knew that the research and intervention inside the hotel and the walls was going to be an administrative challenge.

That same Saturday morning, after the presidential meeting, I exchanged impressions with José Pedro Pedrajas and we mentioned the gaps in the Portuguese wall that could be seen from the other side of the moat; the window that led into the dome; the stone-walled gate nearby; the postern that each one of the orillons had at sea level. How far did the posterns lead, into the bastions or into other hidden spaces within the walls? We were already beginning to dream of new discoveries, but what really moved us was the curiosity to know more about some spaces that did not appear in the old plans but were obviously there. We agreed that it would be best to check it out on the spot, so that same afternoon we put on the wetsuits that we used to do underwater fishing and we left Ribera beach swimming towards the moat, a moat that we now looked at differently because we knew that it hid other fortifications and spaces inside. We could not access the postern of the first bastion because it was blocked, however I made an effort to remember what I saw when I was a child when I passed by there when I trained at the Los Delfines canoeing club (which had a gym under the Martínez Catena bridge). We had to go to the second postern which was open. The tide was high and it helped us to access more easily as the water came inside. You couldn't see much but we were able to take off our flippers and go even deeper, until we saw that it was a kind of rock excavation but quite disintegrated, we knew that the phyllites were characterised by their ability to disintegrate in contact with the air and with the water, which is why landslides were observed that were increasingly reducing the space until we could not continue and had to turn around. We were quite disappointed not to have found anything, but at least the question that got us there remained unanswered, how do you get to the posterns from inside the walls?

The "adventure" through the moat did not end there, when we swam back to the beach, a Civil Guard zodiac was waiting for us behind the bridge and as we approached one of the divers told us:

- You and you, get on the zodiac. Do you want to explain to us what the hell you're doing diving down the moat if it's forbidden?

I looked at José Pedro to see if he spoke, but he didn't, so it was my turn.

- If we tell you the truth, you will not believe us.
- Try it -the guard asked me.
- We are architects, he works at the town hall and yesterday we discovered the 10th century city gate inside the Parador, just behind the window that you see in the wall, in fact shortly after the discovery I met the Government Delegate at the hotel and I told him what we had found because it was an important event for Ceuta. So with emotion José and I told ourselves that perhaps the posterns would take us to other unknown spaces until now.

He had no idea how they would react, but it was the truth. In the end, in a conciliatory tone, they told us.

- Next time let us know and we'll cordon off the moat so that you can inspect the walls without being in danger with the navigation of the boats.

We were thrown into the water and returned to the beach, disappointed, having found nothing.

On Monday, July 1, the director of the Parador, despite all the commotion a few days before, allowed us to enter the “storage room” again thanks to the friendship he had with Adolfo, a space that had been renamed Caliphal Gate. With Fernando Villada, José Luis Gómez Barceló and Adolfo Hernández we wanted to take photos and to make a plan to be able to use them in the report that we were going to present to the president and to the local and national press. The hardest part of doing the plan was not working in a space full of furniture but working in a place that was thought to have disappeared and that sometimes gave you the feeling that you had traveled back in time.

At the same time we began to ask ourselves multiple questions about what was there and about the spaces that were still hidden: Had everything been built by the Umayyads?; why did the interior have the mortar coating?; did it have a specific use within the hotel?; where did the stairs lead, to the roof?; how was the gate connected constructively with the curtain wall of the Coraza Alta bastion?; from the other side of the moat you could see the window perfectly, but what about the bricked-up gate to its left?; if the land between the two walls were removed in the direction of the Bandera bastion, would it be possible to reach that gate?; would there be a larger space or the same as the current one of just 3 meters?; would the caliphal curtain wall continue to the Bandera bastion?; how is it possible that the Parador's architect, Carlos Picardo, had not seen that gate? Regarding this last question, some defended that surely he knew it but once the original plans were checked, we saw that he described that place as the CAVE, so he could not have been aware of what was really there.

There were many questions that arose during that day, but there were many more of an administrative nature: the gate belonged to the Parador but the city had cultural competencies; how would the visits be organised if the only access was from the access gallery to some rooms that were supposed to be of higher quality and therefore required more privacy?; would the City be willing to invest what was necessary to study what was there?; how would the rulers feel about the discovery of such a unique element, being from the Muslim period?; would they do it with enthusiasm or with reluctance like those expressed by the Government Delegate on the same day of the discovery? The meeting held in the presidency in which we were Adolfo Hernández, Fernando Villada and José Luis Gómez Barceló did not help much to clear up the doubts related to the management of the discovery, in fact, almost 20 years later, some of those questions have not been answered, fundamentally, due to the lack of interest and despite the results of the excavations that have made this set of gate, towers and walls unique in the world.

When a discovery of these characteristics is made, that is, outside the scope of research or archaeological excavations, it would be very easy to attribute it to chance, but from the moment that twenty experts in fortifications walk past the gate and no one notices its presence, leads us to another justification, the discovery is the result of a "methodology" applied to field research and what is more important, it is not a task attributable to a single person but to a group of friends specialised in different fields related to heritage, with a great curiosity to know and understand, and with enough capacity to question everything in every possible way.

For me, fortifications represent a field of research that is very close to me since my own father is a military engineer from the Higher Polytechnic School of the Army; growing up in the Comandancia de Obras in Ceuta, playing between machines, in the printing press and in the archives; spend time reading construction books in its library; help my father finish some projects; visiting military works, including contemporary fortifications... all this should influence the way of analysing this type of construction. But beyond the construction systems, the forms, the functions and the location of the fortifications, the main learning has been to assume the way of thinking of military engineers when solving problems, in a specific place and in a precise moment. This happened while I worked with the neo-medieval forts in Ceuta outer field, built between 1860 and 1884 after the war between Spain and Morocco in 1859 and which were built to monitor and control the new lands of Ceuta agreed after the Wad-Ras treaty. Even as a teenager, I remember the camping trips we did once a year with the San Agustín school next to the Aranguren fort, the amateur radio contests in which my parents participated in the Anyera fort or the Sunday lunches to which the Civil Guard invited my father in the Isabel II fort. It is not strange that in a high school work on history it occurred to me to do it precisely on the border forts and that years later, in my fifth grade at the university, I chose the same fortifications for an urban planning project, explaining how control of the territory was exercised from these fortifications, an interest that continued once I finished my studies, when for two years I directed the Escuela Taller Fuertes Campo Exterior, intervening, this time as an architect, in the forts Príncipe Alfonso, Francisco de Asís and Aranguren. I mention this relationship with the neo-medieval forts because for me it is a clear example of how military engineers solve problems, even if this means skipping military engineering manuals and treatises, creating structures that are unique today, along with those built in Melilla at the same time and with the same purpose.

Aldaz, Mendicuti, Bonel, Carbonell, Eguía, Picasso, Valdés, Brull and Picasso were the military engineers who began to carry out projects following the manuals of the time, with polygonal fortifications, to the point that the first fort to be completed in 1860 it is that of Príncipe Alfonso, which is polygonal, but for the rest of the projects they are forced to modify those already drawn to respond to the constant sieges and attacks as well to the tactics and weapons of the enemy, which had nothing to do with those of an European army. Military engineers were forced to resort to medieval fortifications but adapting them to the weapons of the Yebala tribes, which gave rise to the proliferation of arrowslit around the perimeter.

There was another characteristic that I consider essential to be able to put yourself in the mind of a military engineer, the evolution of construction systems. While in Principe Alfonso quarry stone (fundamentally sandstone) was used in the embrasures, at the base of the artillery pieces, in the water drains, on the stairs and in the well curb, in successive projects the stonework was gradually disappearing until it almost disappeared. The cause was the absence of stone in Ceuta for such purposes, the only one that could be used was the peridotite from Hacho mountain but its great hardness required much more time to use it and it was urgent to finish the forts to be able to abandon the redoubts built during the war and protect the soldiers in charge of border control. It was necessary to find other solutions, such as the one carried out by Federico Mendicuti when executing the groin vaults of the second floor of Isabel II fort, he did not do it with stone masonry, not even with bricks, nor with wooden deck slab as on the ground floor, he built it with mass concrete, which earned him congratulations "for the advanced state of Isabel II's works despite the short time spent and the small amount invested". That congratulations that the Ceuta Archive preserves was fundamental to being able to understand how an engineer thinks and how he adapts to the place, corroborated by my father when he showed me the projects he worked on.

The researches carried out on the border forts within the administration also allowed me to meet a series of people with whom I forged a fruitful friendship by sharing the same interests in the heritage and history of the city. Little by little we developed a kind of research methodology on the ground, which consisted of visiting fortifications, or buildings, both in Ceuta and its surroundings, constantly asking ourselves questions, sometimes the answer was given by the archaeologist, on other occasions it was the historian or architects or writer or painters or photographers... although it was also usual for many of them to remain without answers, which led us to visit other places related historically or to investigate each one in its sources and according to competences of each of us, to then going to the same place again and try to unravel the questions. I still remember the visits to Tetouan (with Ahmed Amrani, Younes Rahmoun, Mohamed Benchaich or Mustafa Ben Lahmar), Tangier, Asilah, Larache, Chaouen, Beliunes, Targa, Alcazarquivir, Azemmour, El Jadida (only three weeks before the discovery of the Caliphal Gate), Rabat, Salé, Fez... Places that shared with Ceuta the legacy of the Almohad and Marinid dynasties, the Portuguese empire or the Spanish kingdom and that allowed us an overview of the entire region. It was this interest in the territorial scale that led us to other types of expeditions to tour the cities that constituted, at one point in history, the border line between the north and south of the Mediterranean. The first destination was the island of Malta and then the island of Sicily (which I could not join), later I had the opportunity to continue alone visiting Rhodes, Cyprus, Beirut... These trips, to the other end of the Mediterranean Sea, were also important because they gave us a completely different perspective of Ceuta than the one we had from the city itself, better understanding its importance on a global scale and throughout the centuries.

In the same way we expanded our study areas to the eastern Mediterranean, various circumstances made it possible, more than 10 years ago, to descend little by little towards the south of Ceuta, studying cities such as Marrakech, Agadir, territories such as the valleys of the Drâa and Ziz rivers, the Noun river basin in Guelmim or regions such as Sakia el-Hamra, Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab and Adrar. Cities and territories that at different times in history have also been connected, and very directly, with Ceuta, allowing me to know and understand aspects of our heritage that from a local point of view went unnoticed.

I also applied this methodology or, rather, attitude to the projects I was working on in Ceuta just before the discovery and in which, in one way or another, those same friends participated with me in deciphering the heritage, trying to better understand the history of the town. In addition to the neo-medieval forts, already mentioned, there were the three marabouts of the city (Sidi Brahim, Sidi Embarek and Sidi Bel Abbas as-Sabti), the Paseo de las Palmeras renovation, the collaboration with Fernando Menis for the pedestrian promenade on Hacho mountain (from San Amaro to Santa Catalina), the reuse of the Abastos Warehouse for the conferences and exhibitions of the Official College of Architects... In all these projects, the heritage ranged from the Caliphate era to the present day, so it was necessary a global approach to the history of the city, and not exclusively by periods or areas. The clearest case was the project for the renovation of Paseo de las Palmeras, whose works began in March 2002 (three months before the discovery), with a curtain wall made up of elements that ranged from the 10th to the 20th century. We knew, because it was visible, that there was an Umayyad tower inside the offices of the Real Club Náutico CAS, but after the discovery inside the Royal Walls, we thought that perhaps other remains from the same period could appear; that was one of the objectives of the archaeological excavations that Fernando Villada was going to carry out and that in the end did not give the desired result, however in July 2003, reviewing all the planimetry and the old photographs contributed by José Luis Gómez Barceló in the historical memory of the project, in one of the photos taken by Juan Bravo, after enlarging it on the computer, I observed how there was a bond stone that looked like a stretchers and double headers on the wall next to the tower and that it was hidden by a construction attached to the main building. Once the CAS was demolished at the end of 2003, the well-known tower, a curtain wall (quite altered) and a tower that formed part of the 15th-century Santa María gate were uncovered.

Again, there was nothing to discover, everything was there, but we had to look at the information and reality in another way, with the same attitude with which we had made so many trips and visits to the heritage of North Africa and the Mediterranean.

From my point of view, the discovery of the Caliphal Gate was not a matter of chance, but the result of an attitude shared by a group of friends with a common interest, the historical heritage of Ceuta and its surroundings; aware (with time and experience) of the complexity that many of the constructions treasured by not following the canons and dictates of the military engineering manuals of the time, forcing them to a transdisciplinary approach in order to understand the way of thinking and operating the engineers and builders of each era, this last aspect being the key to understanding heritage.

Normally, value is only given to the construction elements that have come down to us, that is to the material heritage, but for me the circumstances that gave rise to these interventions are even more important, as I have been able to verify working on the architectural heritage in the north of Africa. It could be said that there is an intangible heritage inherent in the fortifications. It is the attitudes towards problems of a defensive nature, in the case of fortifications, that should be protected, especially in the case of fortified complexes or cities (such as the Royal Walls or the medinas) that are still alive, that continue to evolve (facing new needs) and that require an intervention strategy. This is where the dichotomy arises when it comes to adapting them to new uses: does the materiality of what exists prevail or the mentality that caused that materiality? Thanks to the discovery of the Caliphal Gate, we have learned that without prior knowledge of the circumstances surrounding its construction (fundamentally the conditioning factors derived from the already existing constructions) we will never be able to understand our legacy, a knowledge that continues to be incomplete today, and therefore insufficient, not having been able to study the Royal Walls as a whole. Thus, we are still asking ourselves multiple questions and trying to find answers, despite the difficulties generated by an administration that neither plans nor invests up to the importance of our legacy, and that prevents us from showing the true importance of Ceuta in the history of the Humanity, otherwise they would have provided the necessary means to be able to investigate and solve the enigmas of such representative elements of Ceuta as the Royal Walls, the fortress of the Hacho mountain or the Afrag.

To conclude, I would like to evoke the names of Fernando Villada, José Luis Gómez Barceló, Adolfo Hernández, José Pedro Pedrajas, José Manuel Hita, Ricardo Ugarte, Andrés Ayud, Carmen Navío, Ahmed Dabah and many others as a humble tribute to the companions of expeditions and adventures that during so many years asked themselves the same questions, without any complexes, on top of a rock in the Rif or inside a bastion, under a 12-meter wall.

Ceuta, June 2021