Alarcos | JBinnacle – A Travel Logbook

The lady in Almadén had recommended a pretty hermit-church-castle place in the nearby village of Chillón, but when I reached there, it turned out to be closed and expecting a bike race, so if I stayed… well, I would have to stay till the race was over. I left as fast as I could, so I was not able to see the church Ermita Virgen del Castillo and the Bronze-Age paintings nearby. I just stopped for a quick picture of the mining park Parque Minero de Almadén.

A general view of the town of Almadén. It shows that it is located on a hilltop. The main structures seen are the mining complex on the left (a grey mass on top of a black gorge) and the castle at the very top.

I stopped for fuel, then went onto the road. It took a couple of hours until I reached the village of Alarcos. Nearby stands the archaeological site Parque Arqueológico de Alarcos, which displays three historical periods – there are remains of an Iberian town, a ruined castle, and a Reconquista battlefield. The Iberian town was built around the 6th century BCE, located all over the hill. There are remains of a neighbourhood, a sanctuary, and further away, a necropolis.

Remains of house blocks in the Iberian village - foundations built in rock.

Remains of the Iberian sactuary with the Medieval wall in the background.

During the Middle Ages, there was a project to build a town and a castle. The town would have been protected by a wall, and the castle would have stood at the highest point. However, Alfonso VIII decided to fight a battle against the Almohad Caliphate there before the castle was finished. The battle of Alarcos happened in 1195, and the Christians lost miserably. The castle was then turned into an Almohad town until the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa recovered the whole area in 1212. However, nobody wanted to live in the town any more, so eventually its population would be moved to “The Royal Villa”, later the Royal Town – Ciudad Real, the current capital of the region.

Alarcos Battlefield with the sign that positions the troops.

Ruins - more like just the foundations, actually - of the 11th century Medieval castle. It would have been huge, perched atop a hill, but the most one sees is the intention of a tower, and it's not even the keep.

There is also a small hermit church, but that was locked away behind a fence. The castle is extremely derelict, though some of the Moorish houses can be guessed on the blueprint. Any archaeological findings have been taken to the museum in Ciudad Real – which I still have to visit, but timing was not on my side today. Fortunately, that is doable on public transport – if I ever decide to trust Spanish long-distance trains again.

On my way out, the nice person at reception gave me a bag of goodies – a booklet about the site, some brochures, a magnet and a Medieval music CD. She recommended my trying to reach a hermit church on the other side of the motorway to find the interpretation centre about the prehistoric volcanos in the area, but that is for another, focused trip.

I just hit the road to get home. There was an accident on the way and the subsequent traffic jam added an hour to the drive. The last 40 minutes or so, I felt very tired, so even if I had wanted to have lunch somewhere, I also had the feeling that if I stopped, it would be harder to keep driving. I made it home around 15:30 and had a very late lunch.

I consider the trip was a success. I saw the Mine, which is something I have been wanting for years. Food in Almadén was horrible, and maybe future road trips should be broken with a night in-between, so lessons were learnt. More supermarkets, more overnight stops. But I only had a long weekend, so I made the most of it. And splurged on a mercury vial for my mineral collection.

Though work season had started once again, there was a four-day weekend, and I decided to spend three of them on a kind-of road trip. Plane-ticket prices were off the charts even weeks in advance, so I thought that if I had made it to Loarre and Zaragoza, I could just drive an extra 40 minutes and head to Almadén, a place with horrible public transit connections that I have wanted to visit for a long time.

I sketched the itinerary again and again, and due to weather concerns I ended up sticking to the first one I had drafted. The idea was to make a few stops on the way there, one or two on the way back, and spend a whole day in Almadén. I tried to book a “complete” visit to the main attraction in town, the mine, but I was not able to, because they only run it for eight people or more. When I wrote to the Mine to try and understand how that worked, their answer was all caps and felt rude – later I realised it was more of a lack of netiquette understanding. To be fair, it discouraged me a little, and I thought of giving up the whole thing. And honestly, up until the 15th, when the hotel became non-refundable, I was on the line as to whether I really wanted to do it. In the end, of course, I decided to go.

For the first day (Friday), I had drafted a bunch of itinerary options that I planned to decide upon depending on time and tiredness. The only clear thing was that I was to arrive in Almadén in the evening. Saturday would be entirely spent in town, and in the evening I would decided the return day’s stops.

I am always surprised when places that want to live off tourism won’t just… coordinate. Half of the stuff is only open at weekends, and the other half only on schooldays. Most of the restaurants in town were closed and food was pretty much awful in the couple of them I found open. But I saw most of what I wanted to see, so I count the weekend as a success.

19th – 21st September 2025: Road trip & Almadén