Location: Leon
Info: Carrasco 4
Tel. 987 42 42 36
Ponferrada Castle is located in the Spanish city of Ponferrada, El Bierzo region, province of León. It stands on a hill at the confluence of the Boeza and Sil rivers.
The Templar castle is located in what was probably originally a
Celtic fort, in a position similar to that of others in El
Bierzo. Later it is believed that it was a Roman and Visigoth
site.
It is in Romanesque style. Around 1178, King
Ferdinand II of León allowed the Templars to establish an
encomienda in present-day Ponferrada. In 1180 the king issued a
charter for the repopulation of the town that had emerged a
century before, documenting the first fortification around 1187.
In 1196, faced with the attack of Alfonso VIII of Castile
and due to the support that this kingdom received from the
Knights of the Temple, Alfonso IX of León, the crown supported
by the order of San Juan, took Ponferrada from the Templars.
After several disputes, in 1211 Alfonso IX, making peace with
the Knights Templar, donated the town of Ponferrada to them in
exchange for giving them some castles. During the reign of
Ferdinand IV, the trial against the Templars took place in
France, which caused the dissolution of the Order. To avoid the
subsequent confiscation of Ponferrada, the Leonese master of the
Temple, Rodrigo Yánez, handed over the town to the infante Don
Felipe, brother of the king.
In 1340, Alfonso Ponferrada
and its castle continued in the power of the Galician branch of
the Castros until 1374. From that year on it remained in the
power of various successive members of the royal family.
In 1440, Ponferrada passed to Pedro Álvarez Osorio, first count
of Lemos, who had been claiming it for some time. It was this
important Galician figure of the 15th century who carried out
the great works that make up the current fortress of Ponferrada,
which includes: a castle, the so-called Old Castle, a walled
enclosure with its barriers and a Renaissance palace.
After various disputes and lawsuits between the heirs of Pedro
Álvarez Osorio, Juana Osorio - the daughter of his second
marriage with María de Bazán - and Rodrigo Enríquez Osorio,
second count of Lemos - his bastard grandson - the Catholic
Monarchs awarded Ponferrada to Juana Osorio. Rodrigo Osorio did
not comply with the resolution and after laying siege to the
fortress he seized it in 1485, thus starting a rebellion against
the kings. The Crown reacted by forming an important army - 600
lances and five to six thousand pawns - under the direction of
the admiral of Castile in order to take all the squares and
places in Bierzo that supported the count. When the latter did
not surrender, a harsh artillery siege was undertaken on the
fortress of Ponferrada, which was taken by assault in the summer
of 1486. After Ponferrada passed to the Catholic Monarchs -
prior to the siege of the fortress, he had purchased the rights
to the town of Ponferrada to Doña María de Bazán and her
children for 23 million maravedís—work began to repair and
reinforce the fortress, temporarily becoming the residence of
the first Alcayde of Ponferrada and Corregidor of El Bierzo, Don
Juan de Torres de Navarra, cousin of the monarchs.
During
the 17th and 18th centuries the castle was governed by a
magistrate on behalf of the Crown.
Starting in 1850, a
period of strong decline began for the castle: the City Council
sold the walls and used their stones to build public stables and
a market attached to the walls, rented the interior as a pasture
area, and even allowed its grading to locate a soccer field.
Finally, in 1924, it was granted the status of National
Monument, which stopped its deterioration.
In the castle enclosure, shaped like an irregular polygon, two
different parts can be distinguished: the northern part, from
the 12th century, and the rest, built throughout the 15th
century, with some works carried out in the 19th and 20th
centuries. In ancient times the castle was surrounded by a moat,
except in the northwestern part, where the river fulfilled the
same function.
Inside there is a group of 12th century
fortifications of Templar origin: the remains of a barbican at
the access to a patio, to which the elliptical tower opens, part
of the promenade, a tower that had three floors, the tower of
the Malvecino and another tower in which a pointed arch door
stands out, of great artistic value.
The northwest façade
constitutes a continuous parapet that ends in the Moclín tower,
with an irregular hexagonal plan. Below it a new ring opened
that defended the underground that linked the castle with a
cistern, located in a tower.
The main masonry façade is
made up of two towers that flank a wide semicircular arch.
Behind this arch stood the access doors to the patio where, to
the left, is the keep, from which you can access the parade
ground.
Before entering the patio there is a defensive
enclosure that leads to the Cabrera tower, located to the south
and connected to the first defensive line on the east side, at
the midpoint of which stands a semicircular tower, intended for
dungeons and communication with the second. defense line. The
facing continues towards the north, finding another square
tower, before accessing the Malvecino tower, from the 15th
century.
In the parade ground, attached to another
defensive line, there are several rooms, such as the Gallery of
Tiles, demolished and covered in rubble because in 1811 an order
from the Regency of the Kingdom ordered that the interior rooms
be blown up (the damage was not It must have been very large
because in 1815 a society ball was offered in its halls) and
since in 1848 the Ponferrada City Council, with the direct
opposition of the Ponferrada Monuments Commission, began to use
it as a local quarry and a thousand other felonies that
culminated in 1923 when its walls were blown up for the
construction of a sports field.