The history of Manilva
Manilva's coastline carries a long memory of watchfulness: a Nasrid tower stood on this hill before the Spanish crown ordered the coast defended in 1497, and the stone watchtower that followed still looks over Calle Mármol, a quiet residential street built within sight of both tower and an ancient hilltop settlement.
Calle Mármol is a residential street above Manilva's coastline, close to the Torre de la Chullera, a coastal watchtower built in the early 16th century to warn against Barbary pirate raids, and within a couple of miles of Castillejos de Alcorrín, a Bronze Age hilltop settlement.
A watchtower and a Bronze Age hilltop sit nearby
On Calle Mármol, near where it meets Calle Tabacalero, you're on a quiet residential street above Manilva's coastline. The strongest history nearby is not on this street but close to it.
About three quarters of a mile away stands the Torre de la Chullera, a coastal watchtower built to spot pirates and warn villages inland. A similar distance away lies San Diego, a small populated place.
Roughly 1.6 miles off sits Castillejos de Alcorrín, a hilltop settlement dating back to the Bronze Age, long before Manilva itself existed.
A round tower was built to guard against pirates
Before the rebuild, coastal protection orders from 1497 already named Torre de la Chullera as a watch point against Barbary pirate raids. Three guards kept watch there, and their wages were paid by the Moors of Casares, with help from villages in the Serranía de Villaluenga. The new tower went up round, nearly 33 feet tall, with a solid base and a vaulted room inside. It relayed warning signals along the coast to the Torre de Guadiaro and the Torre del Salto de la Mora, covering about 9 kilometers of shoreline between them.
Lightning destroyed an older tower on the hill
The watchtower at Chullera replaced an older one. A Nasrid-era tower, built with a cross-shaped base, stands in ruins about 100 feet uphill from the tower you can see today. That older tower gave out, and in 1516 a royal order described a small stone tower there destroyed by a lightning strike. The crown ordered a bigger, solid replacement built in its place.
The tower still watches the same stretch of coast
The tower still stands on Punta Chullera, a short drive from Calle Mármol, overlooking the same stretch of coast it once watched for raiders.
The tower at Punta Chullera still looks out over the water it was built to guard.
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