The Sleeping Giant of Cartagena: When steel defies the horizon

 If you thought that Neo-Mayan portal was impressive, prepare yourself for the true king of the mountain. What you see isn't a wide-angle optical illusion; it's one of the two largest Vickers guns in the world, a steel colossus that was once capable of launching nearly a ton of shells over 35 kilometers away.

In 1981, it fired its last shots during a live-fire exercise. In 1990, it was decommissioned and finally taken out of service in 1994, as a consequence of the implementation of Northern Plan.

Photographed from this angle, the gun ceases to be a piece of artillery and becomes an endless vanishing point, aimed directly at the heart of the Mediterranean. Coming face to face with this brutalist engineering marvel from the early 20th century makes you feel small, almost insignificant.

This gun didn't just defend a coastline; it defended an era. Today, silent and rusting under the Region of  Murcia sun, it stands as the ultimate monument to human scale and ambition. Would you dare walk in its shadow, knowing that this giant once shook the earth beneath your feet?

Built between 1930 and 1934 as part of Primo de Rivera's Plan*, the foundation work began in 1929, and the pieces were installed in 1934.

*Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930) was an authoritarian regime in Spain, initiated by the coup d'état of Miguel Primo de Rivera on September 13, 1923, with the support of Alfonso XIII. It suspended the 1876 Constitution, dissolved the Cortes (Parliament), and created a Military Directorate (1923–1925) and a Civil Directorate (1925–1930). Its objective was to restore order, combat caciquismo (local political bossism), and modernize the country through public works, achieving success in Morocco (Alhucemas, 1925).