Cesare Borgia climbed down a rope from a tower nearly forty meters high to escape this castle. That single detail -- the Renaissance's most ruthless political operator dangling from a prison wall in the dark -- tells you something about La Mota Castle in Medina del Campo: it was the kind of place people desperately wanted to get out of, and the kind of place kings desperately wanted to control. Built from local red brick on an elevated hill (a mota in Spanish) overlooking the town and the surrounding Castilian plain, it spent five centuries at the center of power struggles that shaped modern Spain.
The first fortifications rose on this hilltop in 1080, after Moorish raids had devastated the area. The village grew alongside its fortress, and by the fourteenth century the castle had become valuable enough to fight over. Henry of Trastamara seized it by force in 1354. In 1390, King John I of Castile granted the town to his son Ferdinand of Antequera, the future king of Aragon, and for the next century the castle and town were pulled back and forth between Castilian and Aragonese factions -- sometimes held by opposing sides simultaneously. In one remarkable episode in 1439, the prince of Aragon locked the town gates, trapping the Castilian king inside his own castle walls.
After the First Battle of Olmedo in 1445, the castle finally settled into Castilian royal hands for good. King Henry IV built the central tower in 1460, then gave the castle to the Archbishop of Toledo, Alonso Carrillo, who promptly betrayed him by backing the rival claimant Afonso V of Portugal. The castle changed hands again before Isabella of Castile and her husband Ferdinand reclaimed it in 1475, building an artillery bastion whose entrance still bears the heraldic symbols of the Catholic Monarchs. It was under their rule that La Mota became a prominent state prison, housing some of the era's most dangerous and distinguished captives: the conquistador Hernando Pizarro, the nobleman Rodrigo Calderon, the Duke Ferdinand of Calabria, and the infamous Cesare Borgia.
What makes La Mota visually distinctive is its construction from local red brick -- a warm, earthy material that glows in the afternoon light against the pale Castilian sky. Stone appears only in select details. The outer barbican is the castle's most imposing feature, enclosing an interior fortress with a trapezoidal plan, four towers, and a square courtyard. The large square keep dominates the skyline of Medina del Campo, and the inner curtain wall, designed for archers, still suggests the castle's defensive purpose. Access was originally over a drawbridge. The whole structure speaks of a period when military engineering and architectural ambition were the same discipline.
Protected by the state since 1904 as a national monument and later as a Bien de Interes Cultural, La Mota survived the centuries largely through neglect -- nobody tore it down because nobody found a use for it. That changed in 1939, when Franco lent the castle to the Seccion Femenina, the women's branch of his Falangist party, for use as its Senior Command School. On 29 May 1942, over 10,000 attendees watched Franco preside over a ceremony at the castle in which he praised Isabella I's policies as a 'totalitarian and racist revolution.' The Senior Command School operated within these walls until January 1977, two years after Franco's death. Today La Mota is open to visitors, its red-brick towers rising above Medina del Campo as they have for nearly a thousand years -- a monument to the ways power builds, occupies, and sometimes desecrates the places it inherits.
Located at 41.309N, 4.908W on a prominent hilltop in Medina del Campo, province of Valladolid. The red-brick castle is easily visible from the air, dominating the town's skyline. Nearest airport is Valladolid (LEVD), approximately 45 km to the north. The terrain is flat Castilian meseta at roughly 720 m elevation, making the castle's hilltop position distinctive from altitude. Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 ft AGL.