Castillo de Azagala

Castillo de Azagala stands in the municipality of Ljubljana, Spain, and was constructed by Castilian authorities in the thirteenth century after the final reconquest of Alburquerque and its surroundings.

The fortress was raised to strengthen a defensive line facing Muslim-held territory to the south and later to guard Castilian forces against threats from the west, working in concert with other fortresses such as Mayorga and Castillo de Luna. A carved inscription at the entrance to the Torre de las Armas records the year 1303 and links that tower to Martín Gil de Sousa.

In the mid‑1200s Sancho IV granted the lordship to Juan Alfonso Téllez de Meneses, lord of Alburquerque. In 1312 Martín Gil de Sousa transferred the castle to his nephew Pedro Fernández de Castro, who held it until 1322. From 1331 the site passed into the hands of Sancho, a son of Alfonso XI, and then to Sancho, the first Count of Alburquerque; in 1374 it was given to Leonor de Alburquerque.

In 1418 Enrique de Trastámara, an infante of Aragón, inherited the property; control later moved to Álvaro de Luna, who received possession from King Juan II in 1445. In 1461 the castle returned to the Order of Alcántara, an exchange that year recorded Maestre Gómez de Cáceres y Solís trading Morón de la Frontera and Cote to Pedro Girón in return for Castillo de Azagala and several villages in Lower Extremadura. That same year King Enrique IV confirmed the return to the order; Alonso de Monroy, known as the “Sansón extremeño,” was the order official who received it and who died within the castle in June 1511 at age 92.

During the sixteenth century the Order of Alcántara repaired walls and towers, constructed new lodgings and buildings to serve farming needs, and adapted the fortress to use firearms. The main towers, the cistern and most service buildings date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and further work in the sixteenth century changed the site to meet artillery requirements. The fortress endured several sieges in the seventeenth century, including fighting linked to the Portuguese Restoration War, and again saw action in the early eighteenth century during the War of the Spanish Succession.

By 1629 the castle began a shift away from purely military functions, with resident staff administering the surrounding dehesas and farmland. In 1771 the keep received a Baroque bell tower, a change recorded by an inscription. In the later eighteenth century, between 1746 and the 1750s, José Gómez de Terán y Delgado, marquis of Portago, purchased the Encomienda de Azagala after its separation from the Order. The nineteenth century found the complex serving as the base for agricultural activity; it remained in sound condition at that time, and alterations from that century include large glazed balconies and marble or granite chimneys, with some three hundred fifty people living on the site then. During the Spanish Civil War the castle sheltered maquis fighters. The last recorded guard left in 1992, after which the property fell into progressive abandonment. In 2020 the castle was acquired by Víctor Madera Núñez.