In the Middle Ages, small villages tended to grow around the castle fortress of the feudal lord who owned the lands. From the lordship or the ruling dynastic house they received administration, authority, and security, among other things, in exchange for tributes and tithes. Anyone living outside the walls of the medieval town would find themselves outside of that protection.
Over the centuries this feudal system was swept away and many towns became cities that, irremediably, had to build extramural walls, even more so when the fortress was already out of use. But what if I told you that even today there are towns in Spain that still live completely sheltered by a walled enclosure built in the Middle Ages? We head to the most beautiful of them. It is in the province of Cádiz and it is called Castellar de la Frontera.
A Hippie Community Managed to Keep It Very Much Alive
We find ourselves in the Campo de Gibraltar comarca, the southernmost of the six that make up the geography of the Cadiz province. Reaching Castellar de la Frontera has its own charm, since the road serves as a belt around the Parque Natural de los Alcornocales.
All around there stretches a thick green cloak until the fortress of Castellar rises at the top of the rocky mound. Behind lie fields where the wild bull roams carefree, while the climb up continues endlessly, prompting us to wonder how on earth they managed to reach this point five hundred years ago without fuels or assisted navigation.
In fact, the town we visit is Castellar Viejo, the one that still endures beneath the castle’s protective mantle, since the Castellar Nuevo is a population center located several kilometers away. This is because in 1965 the Guadarranque reservoir was inaugurated and three years later, with the colonization plan of 1968 promoted by the Franco regime, almost the entire population left the village. This situation was seized upon in the 1970s by a hippie community that settled in the village and took charge of preserving the heritage, promoting crafts and communal living.
