Above the seafront towers, Calpe keeps its old town: the remains of the eighteenth-century wall, the Torreó de la Peça, the Forat de la Mar opening onto the Plaza de la Constitución, and lanes such as Carrer Puchalt, Sant Roc and Pescadors, with stepped streets and painted stairs. Many of the houses here are old town houses, some divided into flats, and some still have the doors they were built with.
Those doors are part of what makes the old town what it is. They also behave differently from the armoured door of a flat on the seafront.
What you find on an old-town door
- Solid timber doors, sometimes very thick, sometimes with a smaller door set into a larger one.
- Mortice locks set into the wood, some with large, long keys.
- Surface-mounted locks screwed onto the inside face of the door.
- A euro cylinder added later, sometimes fitted well, sometimes squeezed into a door that was never made for it.
How they fail
The wood moves. Timber swells in damp weather and shrinks in the dry summer. A bolt that met its keep perfectly in May may catch or miss in August. Often the lock is fine and it is the door that has moved.
Old springs tire. A mortice lock that has worked for decades may have one tired spring or a worn lever. It can usually be repaired rather than replaced, which matters when the lock is part of the door’s character.
Keys wear. A key cut long ago, or a copy of a copy, may no longer lift the levers properly. The lock is blamed; the key is at fault.
Opening one without ruining it
Forcing an old door is the most expensive mistake you can make with it. Splitting the stile or tearing out the keep means a joiner, not a locksmith. The right way is slower: manipulating the lock where possible, and where a later cylinder has to be sacrificed, removing it without touching the timber around it.
That is why we ask on the phone what kind of lock it is. A photo helps more than a description.
Upgrading without spoiling the door
You can make an old door more secure without making it look like a flat door on the Avenida:
- A good euro cylinder with anti-snap protection, properly fitted, where one is already present.
- A discreet security escutcheon on the outside.
- A second lock on the inside face, which is not visible from the lane.
- Keeps and hinges refixed into sound wood, which alone makes many old doors far harder to force.
Getting there
The van stops at the edge of the old town. The last stretch, up the stairs and along the lanes, is on foot with the tools. When you call, the most useful thing you can say is the nearest square, church or stairway. It saves a search through lanes that all look alike at night.
How the opening itself works for every kind of door is on the door opening page. For a new cylinder or a repaired mortice lock, see lock replacement and repair.