Castillo San Felipe de Barajas

On Monday we visited Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, together with the walled city a UNESCO world heritage site since 1984. 

It took us only twenty minutes or so to reach the castle. Since it was still relatively early we were surprised to see a long line-up of people at the ticket counter already. We had not taken into account that Cartagena is a favourite stop for cruise ships, and of course the castle is part of the city tour. 

Standing at the foot of the hill on which it is built it looked formidable, its high, bare walls forbidding in the already glaring sun. The castle itself is 160m wide and 260m long and was defended by 63 canons, as we soon learned – once we had figured out how to use the audio guide, which took a little while since the stations were not marked at the castle itself, only on the map we had received with the guide. We slowly made our way from one station to the next, heard how the fortification grew from the first defensive tower to the impregnable castle it had become by the end of the 18^th century. The city was plundered after the Raid on Cartagena by French buccaneers in 1697. It was besieged by a large English armada commanded by Admiral Vernon in 1741, which ended with the English giving up due to a lost battle at the Castillo and the toll tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever rampant in the swamps adjacent to the city took on the soldiers.

Then followed a period of relative calm and great prosperity, during which the grand colonial houses, palaces, libraries and printing establishments were built. The 275-year long period of Spanish rule came to an end with the Latin American wars of Independence. 

On November 11, 1811 the Declaration of Independence was signed. This independence was short-lived, however: in 1815 Spain sent a ‘Pacifying Expedition’ and placed the city under siege from August to the beginning of December. The citizens were starving, but they were determined not to give in. By the end of the siege, however, about 300 per day died of starvation or disease, so that the Spanish were finally able to enter the city. 

Finally, a patriot army laid siege to the city from August 1820 to October 1821 and was able to gain the upper hand. Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan military and political leader who played a central part in the establishment of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama as sovereign states, gave Cartagena the title ‘La Heroica’, the heroic city, for its determined resistance during the siege. 

Listening to the recounting of these historic events we gained ever more respect for the engineers of this huge walled fortification and the men defending it bravely, sometimes against huge odds. Looking at the highrises of the newer parts of the city it is hard to imagine that insect-ridden swamps once covered the area where they stand now, but after being exposed to sandflies and mosquitoes on our hikes we knew that they would have been a formidable ally for the defenders, especially since there were no means to treat the diseases they spread.

We admired the high, thick walls, gazed through the small openings through which tar was poured on attackers trying to scale them, and had a chance to see part of the strategically designed tunnel system in these walls where defenders lay in ambush. After almost two hours we finally stood on the Santa Barbara battery, the last station of our tour, the only ones except a policeman who had followed us down there, nodded a friendly greeting and was leaning against a post, probably happy for the shade, just like us. Was he there to make sure we weren’t up to any mischief or for our protection? Hard to tell; as everywhere in Cartagena, indeed in many places, there was a strong yet unobtrusive police presence at the Castillo, too. We stood under the roof covering the battery and looked up to the top of the Castillo. Whoever ended up at this battery at a battle would have been almost certain to lose his life here, cut off from the castle at this exposed spot. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it might have felt like when we looked across to the walls above.