Simancas

Human settlement at Simancas goes back to the Neolithic, evidenced by the megalithic tomb of Los Zumacales, a cromlech-style funerary monument on the outskirts of town. Under Roman rule it was known as Septimanca, a city in the territory of the Vaccaei people, and the medieval bridge over the Pisuerga stands as the successor to one that served the Roman road.

For much of the early medieval period Simancas was the most important settlement in what is now the province of Valladolid. Alfonso I of Asturias occupied it in 753, and Alfonso III took it definitively in 883. Later it was seized and destroyed by Almanzor following the Battle of Rueda.

The town lends its name to one of the more colourful legends of the Reconquista. In the time of Abd al-Rahman II, Christian territories were said to owe an annual tribute of seven maidens to Arab leaders. According to the legend, when the moment came to hand them over, the women cut off their hands in defiance. Abd al-Rahman supposedly responded: "If you give them to me maimed, maimed I do not want them" — and it is from the Spanish word for maimed, *mancas*, that Simancas is said to take its name. The story inspired several literary works, including a play by Lope de Vega.

In 939, outside the town walls, the forces of Ramiro II of León defeated the Caliph Abd al-Rahman III in what became known as the Battle of Simancas. Nearly nine centuries later, in 1812, another battle was fought here when Wellington's combined Spanish, English and Portuguese forces engaged Napoleon's troops as they retreated after the Battle of Salamanca.

The castle that dominates Simancas has passed through several distinct phases. In the fifteenth century the Enríquez family, Admirals of Castile, rebuilt the old Arab fortress and added a chapel. The Catholic Monarchs then claimed it for the crown and converted it into a state prison.

Its most dramatic episode as a prison concerned Antonio de Acuña, Bishop of Zamora and a leader of the Comunero revolt. He had taken part in the movement that culminated in the Battle of Villalar, where the three main Comunero leaders — Padilla, Bravo and Maldonado — were executed the day after the battle. Acuña was imprisoned in the castle's tower and given the chance to repent. He did not. Instead he strangled the castle's warden in an escape attempt, was recaptured, and was executed by garrote on the orders of the magistrate Ronquillo in 1521. The tower where this happened is still called the Torre del Obispo — the Bishop's Tower.

Philip II transformed the building into the General Archive of the Kingdom, now the Archivo General de Simancas, one of the most significant archives in Europe with some 35 million documents. The current structure largely reflects the reforms carried out under Juan de Herrera and Francisco de Mora in the sixteenth century. The surrounding wall, towers, battlements, moat, entrance and two bridges all date from the late medieval period. The chapel was remodelled by the Enríquez family and again in the 1950s; it retains a painted stellar vaulted ceiling bearing the coats of arms of its founders, Alonso Enríquez and María de Velasco. The archive also preserves a fireproof chamber housing the bulk of its documents, and the torture chamber survives as well.