Old Castle of Cantavieja

Located on a steep spur, its plan takes the form of an isosceles triangle adapting to the abruptness of the landscape, limiting the long sides in two ravines. The vertex between the two is occupied by the primitive Templar castle, the original point of the village. The castle, due to the rugged and vertical slopes, has superior strategic conditions "to all the Aragonese fortresses, including Loarre". This castle surely keeps the unknown antiquity of the town, hidden under the via crucis, and it is that, both by the vicinity of other settlements discovered in nearby territories, and by the topographic characteristics of the plateau on which sits Cantavieja, it is permissible a retro-extrapolation of history to assert the existence of a village, in the minor angle of an isosceles triangle that was the medieval walled town. If Cantavieja had not reached our days alive, probably any archaeological researcher would have already excavated Iberian ruins there.... The castle in Templar times had at its apex a tower with a triangular base (the current one is cylindrical, from the hermitage added in 1873). Towers would have both the outer wall and the one that separated the two enclosures; in places where the rock facilitated the natural defense the wall would be less thick and of lower height than the Southwest wall. After the resistance of the Templars to eight months of cruel siege by Berenguer de Tobía, the fortress was abandoned. The Knights of the Order of San Juan or of the Hospital were the heirs of all the belongings of the Templars, and when they arrived at Cantavieja in 1347 they would find the castle dismantled. We do not know the state of the castle in the 18th century. In April 1836, during the first Carlist war, Ramón Cabrera occupied the square and fortified it. The fortress of Cantavieja, as it had been built in previous centuries, was very weak. Cabrera decided to build an effective defense and the old walls were repaired in a few days. Cantavieja was the headquarters of Carlism in Aragon. It was the place chosen as a supply center, factory of "workshops for the recomposition of rifles and sabers", prison, cannon foundry, and even the publishing center of a Bulletin that appeared on Wednesdays and Saturdays. When the Carlist troops withdrew, the town and the castle were set on fire; the gunpowder storehouse and the main tower with most of the outbuildings were blown up. Another destruction of our castle that soon after becomes the way of the cross of the people. The tower are the challenges of a small chapel that was added in 1873 dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre, and the four columns that supported the roof that served as an atrium.