Algeciras () is a municipality of Spain belonging to the province of Cádiz, Andalusia. Located in the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula, near the Strait of Gibraltar, it is the largest city on the Bay of Gibraltar ().
The Port of Algeciras is one of the largest ports in Europe and the world in three categories: container, cargo and transshipment. The urban area straddles the small Río de la Miel, which is the southernmost river of continental Europe. As of 1 January 2020, the municipality had a registered population of 123,078, second in its province after Jerez de la Frontera and greater than Cádiz city population. It forms part of the comarca of Campo de Gibraltar.
The surrounding metro area also includes the municipalities of Los Barrios, La Línea de la Concepción, Castellar de la Frontera, Jimena de la Frontera, San Roque and Tarifa, with a population of 263,739.
Name
The Arabic name for the settlement founded by Muslims after the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was (, "The Green Island"), in reference to Isla Verde. gave the modern Spanish . Algeciras' site was also that of Roman cities called ("White Harbor"), (current Getares) and . In the later "Byzantine" period, the site would come to be known in Greek as (), meaning "between rivers/canals".
History
The area of the city has been populated since prehistory, and the earliest remains belong to Neanderthal populations from the Paleolithic era.
Due to its strategic position it was an important port under the Phoenicians, and was the site of the relevant Roman port of Portus Albus ("White Port"), with two nearby cities called Caetaria (possibly founded by the Iberians) and Iulia Traducta, founded by the Romans.
Recently it has been proposed that the site of Iulia Transducta was the Villa Vieja of Algeciras.
After being destroyed by the Goths and their Vandal allies, Tarik landed in Algeciras and Tarifa in April 711.
In the year 859 AD Viking troops on board 62 drekars and commanded by the leaders Hastein and Björn Ironside besieged the city for three days and subsequently laid waste to much of it. After looting the houses of the rich, they burnt the Aljama mosque and the Banderas mosque. Reorganized near the medina, the inhabitants managed to recover the city and make the invaders run away, capturing two boats.
It enjoyed a brief period of independence as a taifa state from 1035 to 1058. It was named al-Jazirah al-Khadra''' ("Green Island") after the offshore Isla Verde; the modern name is derived from this original Arabic name (compare also Algiers and Al Jazeera). In 1055 Emir Al-Mutadid of Seville drove the Berbers from Algeciras, claiming it for Arabs.
Vowing to counter the Castilian expansion initiated by 1265, Nasrid Granada required assistance from Fez in late 1274 and ceded the place of Algeciras (together with Tarifa) to the Marinids.
In 1278, Algeciras was besieged by the forces of the Kingdom of Castile under the command of Alfonso X of Castile and his son, Sancho. This siege was the first of a series of attempts to take the city and ended in failure for the Castilian forces. An armada sent by Castile was also annihilated whilst trying to blockade the city's harbor.
The Marinid grip over the town further increased in the ensuing decades, and the place turned into a Marinid stronghold from which razzias were launched into the still incipient Christian settlements in the Lower Guadalquivir and the Guadalete area.
In July 1309, Ferdinand IV of Castile laid the first Siege of Algeciras as well as Gibraltar. The latter fell into Christian hands, but Muslim Algeciras held on for the following three decades, until Alfonso XI of Castile began a second Siege of Algeciras in 1342. Juan Núñez de Lara, Juan Manuel, Pedro Fernández de Castro, Juan Alfonso de la Cerda, lord of Gibraleón all participated in the siege, as did knights from France, England and Germany, and even King Philip III of Navarre, king consort of Navarra, who came accompanied by 100 horsemen and 300 infantry. In March 1344, after several years of siege, Algeciras surrendered.
On winning the city, Alfonso XI made it the seat of a new diocese, established by Pope Clement VI's bull Gaudemus et exultamus of 30 April 1344, and entrusted to the governance of the bishop of Cadiz. The bishops of Cadiz continued to hold the title of Aliezira, as it called, until 1851, when in accordance with a concordat between Spain and the Holy See its territory was incorporated into the diocese of Cadiz. No longer a residential bishopric, Aliezira is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.