Faro de Cap Gros (La Muleta)

Viewpoint | Sóller

On the initiative of the Town Council of Sóller, its tower and a small building were built in 1842 but it would not be illuminated. It was transferred to the Ministry of Public Works in 1852 and inaugurated on February 20, 1859 as a 4th order lighthouse. As it was not designed by any engineer, something usual then, the internal construction of the tower was atypical for the lighthouses of the time and it lacked a service chamber, so that the lighthouse keepers assigned there had to carry out their shifts in the same lantern, which would provoke their protests as they had to do their work in harsher conditions than the rest of their colleagues in the other lighthouses. Its first luminous appearance was of fixed light and it used a moderator lamp of olive oil, but some years later it was replaced by a Maris lamp of 2 wicks. In 1918 the lighthouse was electrified but in April 1952 a strong storm destroyed the electric line and the Aladdin type emergency lamp had to be used until August 1963 when its lighting system was electrified again. In the 1970s, a sealed beam lamp optic was installed, which remained in service until November 2008. It currently has an acrylic optic and 400 w discharge lamps. Although today the lighthouse is very well communicated with the Port of Soller, nevertheless in the 19th century this signal was quite isolated and in winter, with the frequent rains in the area and some torrents in full activity, the torreros took more than two and a half hours to reach the small population center that then existed in the port. When the torrero of Sa Creu needed to be replaced, generally one of the two who lived in Cap Gros would come.