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    <title>Qualla: Barxell Castle</title>
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    <description><![CDATA[A small 13th-century frontier tower on a rocky knuckle in the pine forests above Alcoy, one link in a chain of medieval strongholds guarding the Serpis valley.]]></description>
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    <itunes:summary><![CDATA[A small 13th-century frontier tower on a rocky knuckle in the pine forests above Alcoy, one link in a chain of medieval strongholds guarding the Serpis valley.]]></itunes:summary>
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      <title>Qualla: Barxell Castle</title>
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      <title>Barxell Castle: Introduction</title>
      <link>https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Drive the CV-795 between Alcoy and Banyeres de Mariola, and if you are not watching for it, you will miss it entirely. Barxell Castle does not loom. It sits low and compact on a rocky mound in the middle of a pine forest, 800 meters up, a knuckle of stone among the trees. There is no town clustered at its foot, no ticket booth, no crowd. Just a medieval building that has kept its lonely watch over this mountain pass for some seven hundred years, close enough to the road to touch and quiet enough to overlook.]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Drive the CV-795 between Alcoy and Banyeres de Mariola, and if you are not watching for it, you will miss it entirely. Barxell Castle does not loom. It sits low and compact on a rocky mound in the middle of a pine forest, 800 meters up, a knuckle of stone among the trees. There is no town clustered at its foot, no ticket booth, no crowd. Just a medieval building that has kept its lonely watch over this mountain pass for some seven hundred years, close enough to the road to touch and quiet enough to overlook.</p>
<p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/">Barxell Castle on Qualla</a></p>]]></content:encoded>
      <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Barxell Castle: A Tower in the Pines</title>
      <link>https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The setting is the first thing you notice, and the most memorable. Barxell rises from its rocky outcrop where the pines close in on every side, a stubby fortress of the 13th century that seems to have grown out of the rock rather than been set upon it. At 800 meters, the air is c...]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The setting is the first thing you notice, and the most memorable. Barxell rises from its rocky outcrop where the pines close in on every side, a stubby fortress of the 13th century that seems to have grown out of the rock rather than been set upon it. At 800 meters, the air is c...</p>
<p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/">Barxell Castle on Qualla</a></p>]]></content:encoded>
      <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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      <itunes:episode>2</itunes:episode>
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      <title>Barxell Castle: The Valley of Polop</title>
      <link>https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Barxell stands in the Valley of Polop, a natural enclave prized for its scenery and pinned between two protected mountain landscapes, the Font Roja and the Serra Mariola. This is limestone country, folded and forested, where springs surface and rivers begin their run toward the M...]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Barxell stands in the Valley of Polop, a natural enclave prized for its scenery and pinned between two protected mountain landscapes, the Font Roja and the Serra Mariola. This is limestone country, folded and forested, where springs surface and rivers begin their run toward the M...</p>
<p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/">Barxell Castle on Qualla</a></p>]]></content:encoded>
      <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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      <itunes:episode>3</itunes:episode>
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      <title>Barxell Castle: Living on the Frontier</title>
      <link>https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[To understand a building like Barxell, you have to picture the border it once guarded. These mountains sat along the shifting seam between Christian and Muslim Iberia in the 1200s, a frontier where control of a pass or a spring could decide who farmed the valley below. A tower he...]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>To understand a building like Barxell, you have to picture the border it once guarded. These mountains sat along the shifting seam between Christian and Muslim Iberia in the 1200s, a frontier where control of a pass or a spring could decide who farmed the valley below. A tower he...</p>
<p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/">Barxell Castle on Qualla</a></p>]]></content:encoded>
      <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Barxell Castle: One Link in a Chain of Stone</title>
      <link>https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Barxell was never meant to stand alone. It belongs to a network of medieval towers and castles threaded through the central Serpis valley, structures that historians of the region have studied together as a single defensive system. Its neighbors are famous cousins: the Cocentaina...]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Barxell was never meant to stand alone. It belongs to a network of medieval towers and castles threaded through the central Serpis valley, structures that historians of the region have studied together as a single defensive system. Its neighbors are famous cousins: the Cocentaina...</p>
<p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://qualla.com/barxell-castle/">Barxell Castle on Qualla</a></p>]]></content:encoded>
      <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
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