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Discovering Cartagena

More Articles By Phillip Bruce www.raxomnium.com

Where is Cartagena?

It comes as a considerable shock to people in Cartagena that hardly anybody has heard of their city. Hardly in anyone in Britain, Northern Europe, Asia or the United States, that is.

Of course, the quarter of a million or so people who live in Cartagena, which is in southern Spain, have heard of the place, as have millions of other Spanish people. Things aren’t helped by the fact that if you search for Cartagena on the Internet you end up with pages of entries on some other city in South America with the same name. In fact, that place is properly known as Cartagena de Indias and it was named after the original, genuine version in Spain.

So, now at least we’re on the right continent. On the map of Spain if you put your finger on Alicante and then follow the coastline south you will eventually find the port city of Cartagena, in the province of Murcia. No-one has ever heard of Murcia either. To complicate things even more, the regional capital has the same name as the province itself – Murcia.

Murcia province is sandwiched between Valencia to the north and Andalucia to the south. “Ah, yes. I’ve heard of them.” You have to be a bit tactful with the problem that no-one has ever heard of the place. A noted World Music artist whose home is Timbuktu was astounded to hear that it was a by-word for remoteness. “But it is the centre of the world!” he exclaimed in wonder. People in and around Cartagena have much the same view of their city.

The regional capital was only founded in the ninth century, when Cartagena had already been going for about a thousand years. Not surprisingly, therefore, it really rankles that Murcia City takes the prime spot today. And it rankles even more that the Bishop of Cartagena, scuttled away from the coastal city about 800 years ago and lives in Murcia. Regular loud calls are made for him to come back home. After all, Saint James the apostle landed in Cartagena personally bringing Christianity to the land and the ruins of the region’s first cathedral stand next to the Roman theatre.

Cartagena is a port city and its long history has always featured the sea. North Africa is only about 120 miles away across the Mediterranean and if you draw a line due south you will hit Oran in Algeria. Looking at the map now put your finger on Madrid and draw a straight line roughly in the 5pm direction and you will find Cartagena. It’s about 280 miles or 450 kilometres from Madrid to Cartagena, although you won’t find the latter city in the Michelin tourist and motoring atlas.

Cartagena has a great little airport that is increasingly crowded with low-cost airline passengers. This is listed in schedules as San Javier airport or Murcia airport. What it isn’t is “Alicante South” which is bafflingly how some airlines misleadingly describe it. Anyone expecting to find him or herself arriving anywhere near Alicante is in for a big surprise. It’s a bit like calling Charles De Gaulle airport “Heathrow South.” No train lines pass San Javier, and bus services go only to the regional capital of Murcia, which is nowhere near Cartagena. They are scheduled to run as follows:

Airport to Murcia: 5.45pm, 7.15pm and 20.45pm.

Murcia to Airport: 1pm and 5.30pm. On Mondays, Fridays and Sundays, there is an additional bus at 3.15pm.

However, these times might change and the enquiry number for the bus company, ALSA, is 902 422 242.

Happily it is close to the AP-7 motorway and most passengers are picked up by tour operators, friends or family anyway. There is a major Spanish air force base at the northern part of the airfield and the top guns fly in the mornings, meaning that the commercial flights usually only arrive and depart from the afternoon onwards. There is a wide selection of English and Spanish newspapers available in the airport shop. Men with earrings and women with tattoos make up a large proportion of the check-in queues.

Now, we’re coming to somewhere that people have generally heard of – La Manga. “Isn’t that where the footballers were involved in that sex scandal?” Yes, that’s the place. However, that particular publicity spectacular mortified the swish crowd that inhabit and visit the La Manga Club which is very definitely not the La Manga strip. However, it was in the hotel in the posh bit that the scandal occurred. The footballers were subsequently cleared.

The La Manga Club is a world-class resort where some of Europe’s finest golf courses are located. The Hyatt Hotel is currently the region’s only five star resort hotel and it is surrounded by million pound houses. The famous football centre is within the club and Europe’s top teams can often be found practicing there. Cricket recently returned to the club with one of the few pitches in the whole country also featuring leading international players.

The La Manga strip also has some fine hotels. Over the past few decades what was once an empty strip of sand that runs north for 20 kilometres and more has become a prime tourist destination. The strip encloses Europe’s largest inland sea – the Mar Menor. This is a beautiful place and a great destination for water sports or for just lounging about on the inland sea beaches or, a short walk away, the Mediterranean beaches. Both feature powder sand. Ecologists aren’t so happy about all the development but when the sun is shining, the water is sparkling and the beer is ice cold everything is great.

So, now we’ve had a few clues as to where Cartagena is. If you want to be exact, it is located at longitude 0 degrees 59 minutes, which it puts it almost due south of London, and the latitude is 37 degrees 25 minutes N, about the same as Tokyo, Washington and San Francisco.

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