Castile regained control of Gibraltar in the Eighth Siege of 1462.Jackson, p. 57 The Moorish threat receded following the completion of the Reconquista and the fortifications were allowed to fall into decay, with very few cannon mounted on the batteries.Jackson, p. 73 In 1535, the Spanish naval commander Álvaro de Bazán the Elder warned King Charles I that Gibraltar's defences were seriously inadequate and recommended that the Line Wall Curtain be extended all the way to Europa Point on the southern tip of Gibraltar and that the town's southern wall should be strengthened. However, his advice was ignored.Fa and Finlayson, p. 17 The soldier and writer Pedro Barrantes Maldonaldo noted that by 1540 Gibraltar's north-west bastion (presumably referring to North Bastion) had only four guns, while the castle's few guns were all dismounted (and therefore unusable), and there were no gunners. The garrison's equipment was antiquated and their numbers were few. The town's walls were still essentially medieval and could not have resisted mid-16th century artillery. The fall of Constantinople 90 years earlier showed just how vulnerable such walls could be in the face of a heavy artillery bombardment.Hills, p. 106
