This privileged place in which Cadiz is today was cooked step by step by the planet Earth. Six million years ago, a severe movement of the tectonic plates opened a massive hole in the area, and during the following eras, some other geological mischiefs would be giving it its shape. Things like the river passing by now, the river not passing by next, the sea level rises, the sea level goes down again. Earth, when it gets to mess around, you know how it is.
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This privileged place in which Cadiz is today was cooked step by step by the planet Earth. Six million years ago, a severe movement of the tectonic plates opened a massive hole in the area, and during the following eras, some other geological mischiefs would be giving it its shape. Things like the river passing by now, the river not passing by next, the sea level rises, the sea level goes down again. Earth, when it gets to mess around, you know how it is.
In the end, the thing went well. We will not deny it: an endless bay and a beach that men with a business vision would find perfect to build a proper harbour.
Such vision and such enclave are what would make Cadiz a city of great importance, and would focus it on the trade that comes and goes by sea.
As you know, as soon as history talks about sea and trade, a Phoenician will stick his nose around soon enough. And around here some of them must have appeared, in the year 1104 BC, to found the city that then, they called Gadir. But like in any story about founding cities, there is a hero or a prominent figure, and in the case of Cádiz, we find ourselves in the arms of a demi-god. He was none other than Hercules, with his Phoenician name Melkart, who came to this coast as a bodyguard of the Tyrian merchants. It looks like the place was strategic, and they needed to play hard.
The bodybuilder and heroic man, Melkart, was buried on the island of Sancti Petri, right here, and over his bones, they erected a sanctuary of which fame extended to the ends of the ancient world. It is also said that a fabulous lighthouse was constructed too with a Herculean statue which was short to come alive and challenge the ocean, then called the Sea of Darkness.
Three thousand years of history give much to say and do, and Cádiz has then behind. It has been a Byzantine and a Muslim City, it has been defended and conquered, and from it, many explorers were thrown into the sea. It conserves walls cut in the shape of a star, neoclassical houses overlooking the ocean and a cathedral with a brilliant golden dome.
We could almost say that Cádiz has been in all the wars, and for that reason, it also had to be in here where, in 1812, one of the first constitutions in the world was proclaimed. The story rings a bell, does it?
