St. James Tower

Tower of Castellar des Portellar

Joined to Mas Castellar there is the "Torre de Sant Jaume" (St.JamesTower), the town's best kept fortified building. It's one of the many defence towers that were built all along the coast in between the XIV y XVII centuries.

In those days, incursions of Turkish or barbarian corsairs and stateless pirates were frequent. Let's take as an example the translation of an inscription in the lintel of the Pineda parish church portal: "On first august of MDXLV at daybreak 11 Turkish galleys took the people to the beach, they burned the church doors and many houses and killed and took as prisoners 19 souls, climbing up to the palace house. At midday they returned to their ships. To protect the population, this church of Pineda has been fortified". To prevent those attacks, the observation towers were used as watching vantage points and at the same time they were defensive elements, in general being part of a strategic fortified system, the communication of which was by means of smoke and fire signals. The towers got to be so numerous that the Maresme coastline was known as the towered coast.

 Most of the surviving towers are from the XVI y XVII centuries. They could be either quadrilateral or circular, isolated or joined to farmhouses. Battlements around the top part crowned them. In Pineda there were defence towers in "Can Cànoves", in "Santa Anna de Merola", in "Can Jalpí" and in the Old Rectory. The most interesting is undoubtedly, the "Torre de Sant Jaume" (St.JamesTower), a prototype of the cylindrical tower with batter and talus base and crowned with machicolations. It connects with the house through a postern levelled with the second floor, accessible through a walkway; it has a blind basement, connected with the upper floors by means of a helicoidal staircase. Beside the tower, there is the farmhouse, with a two slopes roof, formed by three sections; the middle one wider and the other two parallels to the farmhouse rear.The ensemble has been carefully restored, preserving all architectonical details.