Racó de l´Oix / Torre de les Caletes

This place takes us to Benidorm in the Modern Age, when the area was constantly threatened by incursions of pirates who came from the coast of Algiers.

Benidorm at the time was located in the small walled town, in the area known as El Canfali. The authorities of the time, in particular the king Felipe II, ordered to build watchtowers along Levante coast to avoid this threat .

The king’s engineer, Juan Bautista Antonelli, was in charge of planning the network of towers and fortifications. Aguiló Tower, in La Cala de La Vila Joiosa, (you can see it facing south), the walls of the castle of Benidorm, the tower where we are, and to the north, Bombarda Tower, next to Albir Lighthouse, date from that period. Les Caletes Tower is so named because it is located in a strategic point to watch from Serra Gelada cliff the small bays, (called ‘calas’ in Spanish) where pirates used to hide.

These towers were usually guarded by two men on foot and two on horseback who were responsible for vigilance and transmission of alerts to other towers and castles through bonfires, and there was a distance of 6 km from each other, the way that a man called "atajador" could cover in an hour. Les Caletes Tower is different from the rest of the towers because it has a circular shape.