Castle fortress of La Mota

The Mota Fortress is much more than just a castle. Whoever approaches it will be able to learn about the concept of frontier and the ways of life derived from that situation. The system of walls, the cisterns, its streets, squares and houses, together with the Abbey Church, the old Town Hall and the military citadel, serve as guides for a journey through time in which to learn about the life and customs of a walled city in the late Middle Ages.

For more than 150 years, Alcalá became a strategic point on the northern border with the Kingdom of Granada. A space of contact between two worlds, sometimes at odds with each other. It was a complex and dangerous territory, difficult to defend, dotted with countless fortified constructions, distributed on both sides of the border.

La Mota has a complex system of walls; three belts that surrounded it starting from the high part of the hill, in the surroundings of the alcazaba, until reaching the limits of the Old suburb.

From the hill of La Mota, the “mountain of Andalusia”, as it was called in the times of the Catholic Monarchs, there is a wide perspective over Granada territory and it is not surprising the effort of both the Nasrid kingdom to maintain this advanced strategic position and the permanent attempt of its conquest by the Castilian kings to weaken the Arab power of Granada.