Fort Santa Barbara (A)
The remains of this fort have been recently excavated to reveal the layout and major features of its original construction. Spain started to construct the permanent lines of fortifications across the isthmus in 1713.

The Spanish Lines spanned the isthmus at a distance of between eighteen hundred and two thousand yards from the northern defences of Gibraltar. The map above has been rendered from an original map showing the various fortifications in 1782.

On the eastern seaboard stood Fort Santa Barbara, a well built permanent pentagonal structure with a bastion, a dry ditch, a covered way and a glacis. The photograph below shows the model of the fort which is on view at the La Linea Museum. The model is about 80 percent correct in its detail.

The fort had embrasures for twenty-four guns and its two eastern faces looking out over the Mediterranean where its guns could menace British ships and part of the eastern side of the Rock. The range was about halfway along the length of the peninsula.

At the beginning of the 19th century, due to the invasion of the Napoleonic troops, Spain signed an alliance of mutual defence with England. The English profited from this and were allowed to destroy the fortifications of La Linea to prevent them being used by the French. The photographs above and below show the extent of this destruction.

The supports for the original entrance bridge are still in good condition, these can be seen in the photograph below. The view of the Rock is clearly seen in the photograph.

In the months preceding the Second World War, Spain gave priority to the design of a defensive system to protect all its frontiers, and in La Linea a number of new fortifications were built almost on top of the earlier ruins. Below you can see the rear view of a line of six gun positions. These are explained more fully in the section on WW2 Bunkers (B) above.

Fort San Felipe stood at the western end of the Line, this was a broader design with two faces containing twenty-eight gun positions. It too had a ditch and a bastion. The breadth of its front allowed it a wide arc of fire across the Bay of Gibraltar, and its guns could bombard the town and rake the British battery on the Old Mole. The photograph below shows what little remains of this today. These will soon be covered by new buildings in the near future.