Castle in Spain Home to Some Dark Spanish History. Santa Barbara Castle. Alicante, Spain.
hi everyone uh travel addict a guy here and i'm with some friends and we're going up to the castle here guys in alicante and check this out they've got some compass bars right here on the way and we're going up to the top of the castle so look at this neighborhood guys check it out wow so so cool and hard work going up here uh it's all worth it when you get to the top and see the views wow check this out guys you can see the sea already imagine what it would be like to live here take a look at that wow and there's a house up there too so these are my friends that i'm walking with they're both from england you want to say your names for the camera i'm harvey i'm kieran okay wow look at the views guys they're getting to be amazing as you go up here unbelievable guys take a look there and look at this guys take a look there ah there might be a restaurant there so this is a restaurant actually guys it's called la erita look at that wow amazing restaurant here and there looks like a walkway there so i guess you can cross there along the wall oh and there's another way to come too people coming from another direction so getting closer to the summit here it is not too far away now and better views yet of alicante so we have a nice look out here wow that looks great guys you can see the path that we came up started all the way down over there cross through this park and around and up some more nice views here of the castle and there looks like the start of it so very close to the entrance so i'm on some kind of path now that's where these um the british girl took me guys wow so weird path here i find myself on this little path here it looks kind of dodgy guys look at that it's just this tiny path i'm not sure if they went the right way or not but that's the way she went looks like you go down maybe that's the entrance there so that's where i came from there there was a path actually you saw i took that path coming down and there's actually a road going up too guys another road actually as well so here it is finally made it wow that was all out of work guys i will not lie santa barbara wow there's a santa barbara in california and look at that guys you can see i'm quite sweaty whew trying to keep up with those uh young kids was uh job they're moving pretty good so a bit windy up here can i already see some nice views there wow take a look this is the castell de santa barbara should be castillo or they put castell i don't know maybe that is a different language for sure castle or there it is oh this might be that catalan like in barcelona so am i in catalonia now it looks like that catalunya catalan so there's the castell and there it is i util de alecanse so it's free entry so that's nice so the first image it's uh the depiction of a castle during the 16th century in the late 16th century but we have to go you know to the ninth century to understand uh the first castle that was located in here you know if you made a tour with us in the old town if not i will tell you alicante in its actual location is a muslim foundation you know the muslims that appeared in spain in the eighth century and they stayed for eight centuries more well in the ninth century uh the muslims were the ones who moved the ancient city of lucento the roman city that is located something like four five kilometers from where we are next to the cape of las guertas in albufereta and they built an alcazaba this is the spanish word for a muslim castle a castle that was on the top right on the top and the last body uh where is nowadays the macho located it was a you know a castle made mostly with ramet earth first construction of the first pastures do you know what sebastian this is a vast view it's the modern way of uh well the modern tower as you know black powder has been developed so no really high towers anymore just really effect wise uh walls spanish soldiers arrived to alicante commanded by the civilian the night as well the city quite easily surrendered but they could not conquer the castle as more than thousand men were resisting a siege that was quite long so well to surrender the castle and as with the mortars or with the cannons they could not damage really in reality the castle the civilians fell the french commander decided to dig a tunnel a mine under the mountain and he filled the tunnel with more than 10 tons of explosives the 28th of february he had the mind ready and he embodied the british lord you know british commander who was being searched in the castle and known show him the mind and told him in if in 24 hours if you do not surrender we will blow up the mountain with you the british lord is a lord with a lot of honor and he decided not to surrender well the texts tell us that this same day the alicantinian soldiers next to the british soldiers they appear on the walls to be you know to be look at and getting drunk drinking wine celebrating you know the inauguration of the french mine but also they were doing this for weeks non-stop really hard lots of soldiers were digging a counter mine a well that goes deep up to more than 28 meters deep trying to reach the french mine to block the french mine on the first well before they did it but they totally failed we're going to see the world that is located in the same place and goes to no point everywhere well it goes to nowhere so early in the morning or the next day half past three on the morning of the day 29th of february they blew up the mountain have you did you know this some of you yes you did it no but uh well it's a really huge explosion that's happening here and well it's not a really good depiction of i guess on that day because nowadays we know that almost a third of the ancient medieval olympic castle fell fell from the mountains and up to more than 200 men per issue from the explosion including the british lord but 600 men crew resist up to april the siege when they finally surrendered and they were allowed to abandon the castle with honors for you know how hard they fight defending the castle well the brutal explosion left us a really big crack in the mountain we have a valley that you can see from the apostigator from the old town next to the face of the maurya's king you know this really a big face we have in the mountain and well this is the main reason why we don't have a little castle anymore because then after with the bulgars they became and they began to they destroyed the remains from the old castle and they made the castle as we know it nowadays so a really huge fortress with just platforms and bastions to fight with panels in all in all directions this is the back for the architects and engineers their hotel where they used to stay here for uh something less than 20 years into enlarging and improving and you know making all the reforms from the castle so they destroyed the top of the was the remains from the middle castle to build this huge platform known as el nacho with this culture the original culture from the medieval times and this is the last line the last wall with the two last minimum towers that we have left from the medieval times well and then they created this barack dedicated to the king philippe ii where we are now and look how many levels do we have so we came from the road and then we have to cross one gate then with a small bridge to that bastion this is the first bastion known as the bastion of uh god bond repos in valencia language that means would be something like a good chilling because it was the place chosen by the burgess people and the beginning of the 20th century to come to have picnics and enjoy the views then we have another bridge and we came into the first body we have two bastions the bastion of the king and the bastion of the queen and well we come to this working post where you have to do the booking the checking with the very gate and this is the second level with the ruins that we are going to see where the last church dedicated to santa barbara was located but the church exploded by accident and then it was decided not to build any other church seven office of november of 1957 so those two brothers were prisoners in the hands of a spanish republic you know accused of being spies from the right parties of being fascists or you know of being gorgeous well they ended in the castle he was saying that this um castle was abandoned in the early 1900s but during the spanish civil war they took it back over the militaries and they used this as a prison guy so it was actually a prison during the spanish civil war and that inscription he was just showing there i was just showing on the floor that is an inscription of some of the prisoners that were here during the time of the spanish civil war this one is from and in the same year in 1492 they discovered america they conquered the last muslim kingdom granada granada and also they deported all jewish peoples from safari all ladine people okay the years passed and in 1609 in that year in is where the spanish crown decided to deport all mauricos who were the moriscos were those muslims that still live in spain that were forced to become christians earlier but those that didn't convert it on time or those that were you know appointed as moriscos were finally deported because there was an economical crisis from the lords and they took all their properties to sell them to other all the spanish so well we don't have jewish they didn't have muslims but then years passed and in the year 1749 there was another culture another people that the royalty of spain wanted to exterminate or to deport i'm talking about the gypsies and what happens here you know gypsies are still in spain and they became the best ambassadors of our culture with flamenco and so on so the thing is that they failed and this plate commemorates you know it says 261 men suffered captivity in the castle of santa barbara during the great raid the first recorded attempt in history to make a gypsy genocide this happened the night of the 29th up to the 30th of july in the year 1749 and it was orchestrated by the marquis of encenada who was a government secretary and the bishop of oviedo president of the council of castilla both with the approval of the king ferdinand vi very interesting history here guys he said that they actually tried to kill off the gypsies at one time finally they stopped and he said that the reason that most gypsies live in the same neighborhood is not because they wanted to it's because they put them in ghettos and that's what they did to get them out of the public view basically so that is why you have large gypsy neighborhoods in spain for this and also as they stop it to get to madrid and they return it back to toledo and madrid gained some time to improve their defenses because in toledo in the castle of toledo a few young super officials were assisted in a sich really brave they decided to conquer alicante is the last place not for strategic motives because of symbolism because in the beginning of the war on the rebellion from the fascists in alicante the founder of the fascist party phalanxes was put on a trial in a court accused of rebellion tradition and was finally sentenced to death and executed so then after his figure his image of course antonio was taken as a martyr for the fascist movement so that's why they decided to conquer alicante as the last place then after the fascists came here and they took the body of jos antonio from the mass grave and on parade on their shoulders they took the body to where it is lying now it is resting in the valley of the fallen where two years ago franco was in there but finally we took him off as you know we still don't have any museum national museum of the episode and franco died on the bed in 1975 with a low democracy came with a law that was to forget and to forgive but thus does not work anymore it went to the european country and knowing or considering the spanish civil war as the first battle of the second world war because we have all sides nazi germany fascists italy choice russia fighting and you know testing what we were going to do in the same year 1959 up to 1945. wait i have a question franco's body where is it now and now it's in a civil cemetery because the the the body was taken from the valley of the fallen it was given to the family to the certain destination and his lyingness to his wife so it's in a madrid in a public cemetery but because the the monument the tomb the valley of the fallen is a place still used nowadays by the fallen kiss neo-fascists or regional fascists to gomparade they used to do masses in spain the regional fascist party falance is still legal okay undergoing elections luckily they don't get too many votes but here you can raise your arm and do with a roman salute and there's no punishment as in germany or in other countries so still spain is full of mass graves all around so it's now when we're beginning to dig them to make numbers and this is still you know uh we're divided and there's an opposition as a lot of fortunes format by stealing by the genocide we don't really have the numbers you know the casualties and the repression and also this franco's repression is really hard to to study because i thought the germans and nothing germany did with a lot of bureaucracy franco did not develop that kind of bureaucracy so lots of prisoners only have their testimony of being prisoner but no papers that show that they have been in jail you know the day we will finally make the numbers we will no longer talk about the spanish civil war because it was not civil not national international and we will we will begin to talk about the spanish genocide this is what really happened you know the uh there was a concentration camp the first one in alicante it was the almond field that it was located next to the uh this is another one next to the um the shopping mall that we have in here uh it's a platformer the shopping mall behind it is where the the almond field you know the first concentration camp was located with thousands of pesos but from there they were taken mostly to the biggest one in the province and in spain in alberta 60 kilometers from where we are it's the second archaeological campaign that began this year to know the the field and to find the mass grave but we have some aerial views you know you can know you know repression in alicante was pretty brutal one of the most brutal ones that it hasn't been after franco had battalions of slaves until the end of the 50s you know and well luckily nowadays we made the democratic laws of memory and we're beginning to take off all monuments plates with names of genocides and murders but still with a lot of opposition with it so the other right-wing parties menace is that if they win you know in elections they will ban those laws or uh you know this is why it happens so some more inscriptions from a prisoner it says christine rojo which means red prisoner there's a day 1939 the cape of santa pola in the south the cape of las vertes to the north behind this mountain that is the mountain of saint julian and a few kilometers in well in almost the corner in between the mountain and the cape is where you can find albufereta it's where there's the ancient roman city lucentum that you can discover the ruins but walk through the streets of a roman city but surrounded by the brutalist buildings that we began to build in the 60s well this is the location of the old neighborhood known as the red rabbit rabal or arabal is a spanish word castilian that refers to the neighborhoods outside the city walls or the neighborhoods where all the jewish and muslims after the conquest were forced to live you know so that's why we have lots of rabbles in all the cities in spain so this is the rebel roach that was mostly the neighborhood of the fishermen no more fishermen anymore in alicante and also the neighborhood of the traffickers because when they made those buildings they began to discover hundreds and thousands of thousands of tunnels you know where they used to take all goods illegally inside the the city well the mountain of saint julian you see that is a cantier that has been used to take all stone for making the city and nowadays it's almost half a bit pointed with a really big gasoline deposit not in use anymore and we're expecting a waiting for a really big project to have a concert hall something inside the mountain and well this is the biggest problem that the castle had during the modern history the mountain as you will see later with hundreds of impacts that you can find on the walls because when they build the castle in the medieval times having a mountain next to it was no problem but then after with the development of the black poser and cannons it became the worst problem of the city in every war that we suffered in alicante the first battles have been fought in this mountain as all the alicantinians wanted to prevent the enemies to install in there the artillery that finally was accomplished by the bulmans during the siege of the castle in 1709 so let's go to keep on climbing the castle because we have a lot of things to see that's the mountain he's talking about guys and a beautiful view here wow so in a very intense presentation and this man is very knowledgeable the spanish guy and he's very passionate i like his delivery even though his english is not perfect guys he's very passionate about his delivery and i learned a lot of things about spain that i did not know as you can see you know in the very peninsula we are two countries two states spain and portugal so how is it possible that portugal is not spanish and with the valencias are spanish the catalans are spanish the vasquez venice because they fall a lot they're not in the middle times but also because portugal is the oldest the oldest ally of england with a path from the 14th century that is still running you know so being the bourbons in castilla also french and being france enemy of england napoleon asked the spanish royalty if he could cross spain with his army to conquer portugal and they allowed him into entering into spain in diagonal with his army but then after when he was here he asked the royal family of spain if they could visit him in bayonne southern france to discuss some things about the military campaign and their fool all the royal family went there in there in france napoleon convinced the kings of spain to get him the throne and the crown and they did it and napoleon put took the crown of spain and he put the crown over the head of his brother jose bonaparte known in spain and remembered in spain as pepe botella you know bottle when this happened a popular uprise rebellion started in all the countries because mostly all spanish being farmers illiterates and catholics did not understand what was happening they used to say that the royal family was kidnapped in france and by those demons anticlinical you know and republicans so on the with the war cry of long live the catholic church long live the king in gerias the people began to fight the french then after the revolution and the war was taken the control by the spanish liberals that gave us the first constitution of the country la pepa constitution of cadiz on the year 1812 after the war you know the liberals called the fight back the french avandone finally the country and spain was liberated so the king was back as he was the head of the constitutions made by the liberals ferdinand the seventh came to spain and instead of a 13 the constitution that made by those that gave and returned him the throne he banned the constitution and began to prosecute a two in jail all those liberals deliberated in spain absolutism was back so if 300 years ago the spanish word of section is the beginning of independentism of catalonia and so on this episode is the beginning of spanish republicanism as uh the liberals some of them saw the burdens as traitors to the nation so we still are divided as you know in between royalty or republicans so on the year 1812 in alicante what it happened is that it was really a bad year because valencia fell in the hands of the french and also sagunto a military village and the french army was coming to siege and conquered alicante so the siege camp formed by the french was installed in the mountain torsal where we have another castle castle of uh ferdinand but it was not uh well built during that time and i felt begun a battle where nowadays we have the church of santa cruz there was a bastion it's a corner so with a lucky shot made by vicente terregrosa the engineer who made the canons a few few hits shots hitted the weapons deposit from the french army and the city camp there was a really huge explosion so the french were forced to abandon to flip direction north so they well they run away but not running away they decided to go to the countryside to exterminate and execute a lot of people in the countryside of alicante so alicante gained some time to improve the defenses and it's in here when antonio de la cruz military manager of the city he ordered that in the castle the soldiers must make and fabricate as many bombs hand grenades explosives as possible where did they store them in the church and next to the church where we now have this small gate here there was another building that disappeared with explosion that was a kitchen so it seems that a spark from the chimney we don't know what really happened but suddenly the church exploded all the church exploded half of the barracks fell off and more than 50 men perished there's also a legend that explained us that the day of the explosion was the anniversary of the wedding of antonio de la cruz and his wife you know was the anniversary and where was his wife praying the rosario in the church so she perished also then after it was decided not to build a church to santa barbara anymore so we had her there okay but it's also another not funny but a coincidence because you know that everything has different powers it needs to be pattern of jobs or works or some things santa barbara uses to be the patron of the miners and also she's the patron of the weapons deposit and the chamber in a worship spanish worship from the 19th century an organ from the empire where they keep all weapons and blood powder is known as santa barbara so she uses to explode okay dangerous dangerous woman is this is the entrance to the upper part of the castle and he said there would have been guards stationed here and they would have had bayonets and they actually used these bayonets to sharpen they used the stones here to sharpen the bayonets guys and you can see the marks they left wow and this is sandstone so good for sharpening things wow this place is vast it is vast look at that and i believe he said there was two gates and this was the second gate he called it the gothic gate i believe and there was actually a moorish gate the original gate so this was the second gate so this was the original moorish castle yes and it was built right up there yes in the top of the of the mountain okay and that's the one that was destroyed yes yes half of it all uh third because it fell from that part and that was during the um there's 17 explosives in that moment hundreds of thousands of donkeys in all spain and we're public workers because it's not the same you know to steal my own i don't care that the one that belongs to the silicones and manolo was the last donkey that spent all his life living in this small cave and we have to thank him because was the last donkey that worked a lot in the castle bringing bricks rocks and water to the workers that were you know restoring the castle in the 60s to have this uh discussion touristic as we haven't noticed so in 2014 we decided to it was decided to make an image to his memory and you know making this uh museography with the cardboard manure we're on the highest point now guys look at this and of course the rain has to come whole stadium there guys the corridor de toros wow you get such an amazing view from up here look at it so i met a couple people on the tour and a man and his wife and your name again was my name is hugo hugo who knows okay and they're from florida originally from columbia and moved to florida yeah okay very nice thank you and so on thank you for choosing me and enjoy elegant hope to see you next time i'm with the tour guide guillermo man he was just a great guy i love his passion i love your passion man it was so awesome the um the tour i really enjoyed it man and can you tell me a little bit more about yourself did you grow up here in alicante yes well i'm from elsie 20 kilometers from where we are where we have the most our palm trees up to more than 340 000 okay and i study history and i really love to tell those stories so i hope that you come to alicante to visit us and choose us to have a free tour all around the castle okay and what is the name of your tour company it's a free walk-in tours alicante.com okay guys we'll see in the next video travel attic the guy and guillermo see you take care everyone
2022-01-22 13:09
