Old town and port
The iron gate in front of an old-town door, and the key that has gone
Xàbia’s historic centre was walled until 1874. Inside the old line of the walls, around Sant Bertomeu and the market, many houses still have what the town’s own guides point out: tosca-stone doorways, traditional wooden doors and iron grilles on the windows. Some have gone a step further and put an iron gate across the doorway itself, in front of the wooden door.
It is a good arrangement for a house that stands empty part of the year: the wooden door can be left open for air behind a locked gate, or both can be locked. It also means two locks, two keys, and twice the chance of losing one.
Which lock is it?
Gates in old doorways are usually fitted with one of three things:
- A box lock bolted to the inside of the gate, with a large key.
- A cylinder lock set into the frame of the gate, like a modern door.
- A padlock on a hasp or a chain.
Which one you have decides how the gate is opened. A photo sent on WhatsApp usually answers the question before anyone sets off.
Opened through the lock, not through the iron
Cutting through a bar is quick, and it ruins a gate that was made for that doorway, sometimes generations ago, by a smith who is no longer working. A box lock or a cylinder can almost always be opened from its keyway, and a padlock can be opened or, at worst, removed by itself, leaving the gate untouched.
Once the gate is open, the wooden door behind it is opened the same way: from its lock, never by forcing old timber, which splits along the grain and does not glue back.
Keys afterwards
If the gate key was lost somewhere it could be traced to the house, the lock should be changed, not just opened. On a cylinder lock that is a short job; on an old box lock, the lock is either refitted with a new mechanism or replaced with one that suits the gate. Keys are not cut here: new locks come with their own keys from the maker.
Two habits worth keeping
- Keep the gate key separate from the house key when you travel, so one lost bunch does not shut you out of both.
- Lock the wooden door with the key too, not just the gate. A door that is only pulled shut can be slipped, as 84 burglaries in Xàbia proved in 2024 and 2025.
Plan any work for a weekday that is not Thursday if your street is near Plaça de la Constitució: that is market morning, covered in shop lock work on market Thursday. And if your house is down by the harbour rather than up in the old town, read a ground-floor door in Duanes de la Mar. A door shut on you tonight is an emergency call-out.