Pedraza

The town's name likely derives from a Roman settlement called Pretaria. The first clear historical record dates to 1369, when King Enrique II of Castile granted lordship over Pedraza to Fernando Gómez de Albornoz. It later passed to the Herrera family and then to the Constables of Castile, the Fernández de Velasco dynasty, through marriage.

Under their rule the town became a stopping point for artists, nobles, and monarchs, and reached its greatest prosperity — driven by the export of merino wool and high-quality textiles that competed with the finest Flemish cloth. Most of the town's manor houses date from this peak period. In 2014 Pedraza joined the association Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España.

The gateway into Pedraza is the town's only entrance and exit. It dates to the medieval period and was rebuilt under Íñigo Fernández de Velasco, whose coat of arms still sits above the arch. The doors are made of black poplar wood. For centuries they were locked at night, with the jailer — who lived in the adjacent prison — the only person authorised to open them in an emergency.

That prison occupies what was originally a watchtower beside the gate. It has been restored and now operates as a museum. The conditions it documents are stark. Common criminals, usually thieves, were held up to fifteen at a time in wooden cells of roughly three metres square, with almost no light. Those convicted of violent crimes faced worse: they were dropped individually through a trapdoor into a lower room, a fall calculated to break legs and ankles and make escape impossible. The prisoner would die within days. Because the jailer had to summon and pay the executioner from Segovia to remove the body, the next prisoner thrown in was handed a basket and made to collect the corpse himself. Other prisoners were dropped through a separate trapdoor into a room designed to receive waste from the floors above, where they died slowly from injuries or infection. Remand prisoners had a slightly different arrangement: free to move during the day, but at night locked into stocks or chained standing against the wall — at a height chosen by the jailer, sometimes forcing the prisoner to stand on tiptoe until morning.

The castle stands at the edge of the town above a precipice that forms a natural moat on most of its perimeter. Originally built in the medieval period, it was rebuilt by García Herrera and later reformed by the Dukes of Frías, who added a large defensive wall attached to the keep, outer walls with gun ports, and a drawbridge that no longer exists. The keep and dry moat remain. The castle's most notable historical episode involves two sons of the French king Francis I — the Dauphin Francis and his younger brother, the future Henry II of France — who were held here as hostages by the Emperor Charles V. Their father had surrendered them as a condition of the Treaty of Madrid in 1526, signed after his capture at the Battle of Pavia. They remained at Pedraza for two years, until March 1530, when the Peace of the Ladies secured their return to France. Before Pedraza they had been held at Villalba, Villalpando, Berlanga de Duero, and briefly at Castilnovo — all fortresses belonging to the Fernández de Velasco family. The records of their captivity are held in the Archivo General de Simancas.