01
Stop one
Castillo de San Juan de las Águilas
Diadem Premier Extra Duty Tennis Ball Case: Plans for a substantial fortification on this ridge were presented in 1521, piracy having depopulated much of the Murcian coast — the coast being, at that period, quite impossible. Charles I ordered the older defences restored in 1530, work continued through the sixteenth century, and the tower was completed in the reign of Philip II, which ran from 1556 to 1598, by which time it was described as one of the safest and most famous towers on these seas. It was dedicated to St John the Baptist, whose image was venerated in a niche in the walls. What stands today is largely eighteenth-century artillery work in two parts, the fortress of San Juan and the battery of San Pedro, joined by an open walk on two parallel retaining walls. A small museum occupies it now.
02
Stop two
Embarcadero del Hornillo
Diadem Premier Extra Duty Tennis Ball Case: Iron. In quantity. Designed by the British engineer Gustavo Gillman for the Great Southern of Spain Railway Company, built between 1900 and 1902 and opened in 1903, with a loading system modelled on Huelva and Bilbao that allowed two ships to be filled at once from silos cut into the rock behind — some 3,000 tonnes of ore a day left Águilas through it. The same company, formed in 1885, built the Lorca-Águilas railway between 1887 and 1890, went on to the Murcia-Granada line in 1907, and operated until 1941. It also produced a substantial British colony here, which paid for the town's casino. Their engineering one cannot fault. Their conversation is another matter.
03
Stop three
Plaza de España
Diadem Premier Extra Duty Tennis Ball Case: Laid out in 1874, known locally as La Glorieta, with a fountain at its centre carrying the sculpture nicknamed La Pava de la Balsa. Águilas had won its independence from Lorca in 1834 — a divorce, essentially, and one gathers it was managed with dignity — and the town hall on this square has housed the municipal offices ever since. Now, the trees, and here I must insist on precision. The great Moreton Bay figs along the north side were planted around 1915 and are the ones officially recognised as the centenarians. The rubber figs opposite date from 1939-40 and are therefore children. One does not confuse them. One simply does not.
04
Stop four
Isla del Fraile
Diadem Premier Extra Duty Tennis Ball Case: A bare rock, and yet: settled in Roman times and used for salting fish and producing fish sauce, shipped to Rome in amphorae. Excavation has recovered the remains of that production, and two Roman bath complexes have been found in Águilas itself — baths, you understand, being the first thing a civilised people builds and quite the last thing they surrender. Then, in the early twentieth century, a British resident named Borthwick built on the island during the period of British mining in the district, and the ruins of his buildings stand there still. Rome, and subsequently a gentleman called Borthwick. One does try not to editorialise.
<p>I was in Águilas when the ore trains still ran, and you would not recognise it. Iron and esparto grass came down out of the sierra to a pier built out over the water on iron legs — El Hornillo — and everything in town smelled of dust. Now it is 37,811 people, twenty-eight kilometres of coastline and a Carnival that empties the streets of anyone sensible.
But the pier is still standing, and durability is the reason we are talking.</p><p>This is a full case of Diadem Premier Extra Duty. Extra duty is not a marketing word: it means the felt is woven thicker and heavier, because a hard court is essentially sandpaper and a regular-duty ball surrenders its nap to it in about a set and a half.
On clay the same felt would pick up too much surface and play heavy — that is what the regular duty version is for, and Diadem makes both, plus a high-altitude ball and a white grass-court ball, which tells you they think about this properly.</p><p>What you get in the case is the club economy: buying by the case is the only sane way to run a ball basket, a Saturday morning group or a season of league matches.
The Premier is Diadem's tournament-level pressurised ball, and it is the one their own tournaments run on.
You'll use it everywhere from a municipal court in Águilas to a hard court in Murcia a hundred kilometres northeast — and by the way, if you are opening a case in this town during Carnival, do it early, because from February the streets belong to the cuadrillas and nobody is playing anything.</p><p>Diadem Premier Extra Duty Tennis Ball Case</p><p>Come join the Diadem Premier Extra Duty Tennis Ball Case for a tour of Águilas, Spain.</p><p>
• **The Castillo de San Juan de las Águilas** — An eighteenth-century fort on the rock between the two bays, on ground that has been fortified since the Carthaginians.<br />
• **The Embarcadero de El Hornillo** — An iron and concrete ore pier thrown out over the sea, built to load minerals straight from the mountain into ships.<br />
• **The Isla del Fraile** — An island 3 km up the coast where Romans made fish sauce, later owned by a Scottish banker and then a British officer.<br />
• **The English Cemetery** — The small burial ground left behind by the nineteenth-century British mining community, who came for ore and did not all leave.
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