Ãguilas
Águilas is a Spanish port town on the Costa Calida in the autonomous region of Murcia. The city is located 105 km from Murcia and 75 km from Cartagena, bordering the province of Almería. The municipal area includes around 28 km Mediterranean coast.
History
Already in Roman times insisted on the territory of today Águilas a settlement called Aquilae and later Aquila. The city proper foundation was but by Spain's King Charles III. in 1766. beginning of the 19th century began with the systematic exploitation of iron, lead and silver deposits around Águilas. A Scottish immigrant, businessman John Gray Watson, made sure that Águilas In 1896, the first football stadium in Spain. Importance was Águilas end of the 19th century as a Spanish seat of British Railways The Great Southern of Spain Railway Company, which was awarded in 1874 the concession for a railway connection between Aguilas and Lorca. Later, she also set up connections to Murcia and Granada.
Economy
Most important industries are tourism, intensive vegetable production in greenhouses as well as the construction and real estate industry.
Worth seeing
The Castillo de San Juan is a fortress, built in the 18th century to protect against pirate attacks. They perched 85 meters above the southernmost point of the old town.
Much less known is the Castillo de Tébar, about 12 kilometers to the north at an altitude of 490 meters above the sea outside the city limits. The ruined fortress dating from the 12th century. The still existing tower once had a height of 15 meters. Today, a 7 meter high ruins remained. The tower contains loopholes for muskets. One of the main functions of the Castillo was to give notice to the garrison in Lorca in pirate attacks. Due to its exposed location, the fortress was well suited for this. The low awareness of the Castillo de Tébar stems from the lack of tourist development of the ruin ago. There is currently no way to the remains of the fortress.
The Isla del Fraile, a 56,000 -square-foot island two miles off the bay of El Hornillo was inhabited in Roman times. Today it is a popular dive site.
The British Cemetery remembers informed at the time of the British railway workers, on their activities and the Railway Museum (Museo del Ferrocarril ).
The Football Museum (Museo del Futbol Aguileño ) shows memorabilia from the more than one hundred year history of football in Águilas.
In 2002, the Carnival Museum (Museo del Carnaval ) was opened in Aguilas, in which, among other things, a large number of costumes of the various carnival clubs is presented.
Others
Águilas is a holiday or winter residence for many North and Central Europeans, especially from the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. Your primary residence have 5409 foreigners in Águilas. More than half of whom are citizens of the European Union, including 404 German and 379 British. Among the prominent dial Aguilenen is the TV presenter Dieter Thomas Heck, who lives in the district Calabardina and the German Icons artist Klaus Richter, with his studio and gallery. Águilas is the editorial office of the German weekly news Costa Calida.
Personalities
- Francisco Rabal, movie actor
- Klaus Richter, painter and artist icons