SANLCAR DE BARRAMEDA

port city, Cadiz provincia, in the comunidad autnoma (autonomous community) of Andalusia, southwestern Spain. It lies on the south bank of the Guadalquivir River estuary, north of Cdiz city. Built on the site of Luciferi-Fani, a Roman settlement, the town was taken from the Moors in 1256 and given to the soldier Alonso Prez de Guzmn the Good, who was its first lord and builder of the first castle. The court of the dukes of Medina-Sidonia was later established there. From its port Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in 1498 (his third voyage), and Ferdinand Magellan departed in 1519 to circumnavigate the world. The city's 14th-century church and the palace of the dukes of Medina-Sidonia contain many art treasures. The Hospital of Saint George was founded in the town by Henry VIII of England in 1517 and now houses the Colegio de San Francisco. Sanlcar produces the famous aromatic white wine of Andalusia known as Manzanilla. It is also a popular sea-bathing resort on the Costa de la Luz (Coast of Light). Doana National Park in the delta of the Guadalquivir River is to the north of the city. Barrameda derives from an Arabic word signifying sandy gateway and alludes to the sandbank that once obstructed the navigation of the Guadalquivir 60 miles (100 km) upstream to Seville, of which Sanlcar was the anteport in the days of Seville's monopoly of colonial trade. Pop. (1991 prelim.) 55,934.