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The Puerta de Elvira was Granada’s triumphal arch for all of the city’s invaders: the Catholic Monarchs paraded solemnly through it when they conquered the city on January 2, 1492, and three centuries later they were followed by the Napoleonic army. The gate was originally a massive fortress in its own right,with the characteristic monumental outer gate and smaller (easier to close) inner gate, followed by an L-shaped passageway, but the French officers feared that these latter elements could be an obstacle for the rapid deployment of their troops in case of an uprising, and had all of the construction torn down but the monumental façade.
The name of the gate has long puzzled the lovers of Granada. Elvira, as we know, was the Arab way of pronouncing the old name which the Romans gave to Granada: Iliberis, which in turn has its origin in the prehistoric Ilbyr. Therefore it might seem that the translation of Puerta de Elvira would be “Gate of Granada”, which is contradictory if we remember that medieval gates on high roads were always called by the name of the town they led to rather than from.
The infernally complicated explanation for this, put as clearly as possible, is as follows: When the Arabs invaded Spain in the 8th century, they used the name Elvira to refer not to the city of Iliberis itself but to the entire region or “cora”, which they administered from a new city they founded to the west of Granada called by them Madinat Elvira or “City of Elvira”, while referring to the old Roman city as Madinat Garnata, “Garnata” being the name of the Jewish citadelwhich was then its heart.
We are unaware exactly where this Arab town of Elvira stood, but the local toponymy suggests that its ruins are buried near the foot of the isolated rock which rises from the plain to the west of Granada, still called Sierra de Elvira. In any case, Madinat Elvira was abandoned at the turn of the millennium with the advent of the Zirid dynasty, who chose to use the old Roman city, now called Garnata/ Granada, as their capital.
Therefore it is clear that the name of the gate does not refer to the ancient city of Iliberis/ Elvira, now Granada, but to the Madinat Elvira founded by the Arabs, and which has long since disappeared.