A castle perched on a huge rock above the river plain is what I first saw on approaching Aguilar de Campoo, a small town located in the north of Palencia, a province in Castilla y León. Nothing in particular distinguished this castle from other castles seen at a distance, but since my friend and I were driving by, we decided to stop.
The castle, called Aguilar Castle, is a trapezoidal structure with circular towers at the corners and an arched entrance in one wall. Alone on the rock above the town, it looked like a great squat bird of prey, I thought. I was undoubtedly influenced by the name, aguilar, which means place where eagles live, and probably derives from the ancient colony of birds in the nearby mountains. The castle, Romanesque in style and built in the 10th or 11th century, is in ruins. Most of what you see is from reconstruction of the original fortress, and dates from several centuries later. All of this I would have expected to learn by reading a plaque near the entrance to the ruins. But when my friend and I climbed the 100 meters up to the top of the rock, no sign was posted outside the castle telling of its origin, history, importance, status, or future.
A dirt path led us to the doorway. Within the walls was grassy ground strewn with rocks. A surprisingly small and simple sign said to respect the fortifications, but no areas were restricted and nothing existed to keep sightseers off the crumbling remnants of thousand-year-old walls. Nobody was there but us. I took a few pictures, and then we left, walking back to the town below and to the car, to continue our journey home.
Only through later research did I learn that the castle was strategically important to defend the ford of the Pisuerga River and the nearby mountain passes, and that the castle, though still stout, was already in decline when visited by King Carlos I in 1517. In 1522, he visited again, now the Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V. At different times, the castle served as a residence for nobility, a fortress, and a prison. It was declared a Historical Artistic Monument in 1949, though to what end I’m not sure. Nothing was left of fixtures or fittings, nor even any remnants of them, in what must have been the grand chambers where kings and emperors were entertained. Nothing but the crumbling walls. What a surprise to see such a structure seemingly abandoned to its own devices—endure if you can, might be the message. And it has.
At the end of May, a year after that first visit, I was back in Aguilar de Campoo for a footrace. I did not return to the castle, though I registered that it sat as before on its pinnacle above the town. Nothing about it now suggested a brooding eagle with a sharp eye. If I’d had to liken the monument to anything, it would have been to someone’s ancient relative sitting on the porch while life unfolded on the lawn below, but I didn’t give it much thought.
My running partner and I arrived the day before the race, and so we had an afternoon to explore the area. We started with the town, noting the many ancient buildings and perusing the informative plaques describing them. The town and its surrounding area, I learned, is known for the numerous Romanesque buildings—more here than anywhere else in Europe. These were churches, monasteries, fortresses, and palaces. By the 18th century, the source of the town’s wealth was agricultural, principally the flour industry, with seven mills at one time, and five cookie factories operating simultaneously. Galletas María, the standard breakfast cookies, were first made in the 1950s in the town. Now, only the multinational Gullón still bakes cookies in Aguilar de Campoo.
After getting our fill of architecture and history, we drove into the countryside looking for the natural monument called La Cueva de los Franceses, where French soldiers took refuge and buried their dead during the Peninsular War of 1808. It was about 10 miles away, on a high, empty limestone moorland. The terrain was rough, and patches of white stone showed through the low vegetation of grasses and shrubs, including a succulent with yellow flowers called espeletia and known commonly as frailejón. In the distance was a line of blue mountains. The area, called the Páramo de la Lora, is within the UNESCO global geopark Las Loras, one of several such parks in Spain.
The caves were closed for maintenance, as we discovered when we parked outside the small welcome center. It was the only structure visible in all that open space, and ours the only vehicle. Even with the caves closed, our drive was not in vain because the plateau was impressive, especially if you turned your back on the building. I did. Before me, across the empty miles, were the mountains. More and more, these large, wide avenues over a landscape, rather than the narrow halls of churches and palaces, are the sights I appreciate and remember.
On our return to Aguilar de Campoo afterward, as we descended from the plateau to the river valley, what my friend pointed out to me was not the castle on the rock but the much larger Gullón cookie factory at the entrance to the town. The company name was in red letters on a band of green filling half the factory wall, impossible to miss. Unless your mind was somewhere else.
From fortress town to flour town. From renown for its nobility to renown for its cookies. Big changes. But not bigger than the castle’s change, going in 12 months from brooding eagle to great aunt, absorbing the years as visitors come and go and perhaps return, undergoing their own changes.
