Before being a region of wineries and charming villages, La Rioja was a frontier: between kingdoms, between religions, between what can be proven and what is only told. Two episodes, one of medieval legend and one of documented history, mark the Rioja imagination.
Clavijo castle and the battle that perhaps never happened
In Clavijo, fifteen minutes from Logroño, a castle of Arab origin overlooks the Iregua valley from a hill. Legend says that in the year 844 King Ramiro I of Asturias faced Emir Abd al-Rahman II there, and that at the most difficult moment of the battle the apostle Saint James appeared on a white horse to give victory to the Christians: the origin of “Santiago Matamoros” (Saint James the Moor-slayer).
Today few historians doubt that the battle, as it is told, did not happen as a real, documented episode; the story was built centuries later to give the Reconquista the character of a crusade. But the castle is real, you can climb it, and the views of the valley alone justify the stop.
The Logroño Auto de fe of 1610
This did happen, and it is not legend: in November 1610 the Inquisition tried 53 people in Logroño accused of witchcraft, in one of the best-known episodes of the witch hunt in Spain. Six of them died at the stake. The trial lies behind much of the later imagery about witches in northern Spain, including in Rioja villages of the Cameros mountains.
The legend of the Achóndite witch
In El Rasillo, in the heart of the Cameros mountains, the story is told for generations of a witch expelled from a coven and who took refuge in the area. It is oral tradition, with no claim to being historical fact, but it forms part of the same landscape of legends that crosses the Rioja mountains from end to end.
Between the castle that almost certainly did not witness that battle and the trial that did happen, there are more than a thousand years of Rioja history told in two different ways.
We treat the 1610 Auto de fe as what it was: a real historical event with real victims, not as entertainment. The battle of Clavijo, by contrast, is told here as what most historians consider it to be: a legend constructed after the fact.
Can you climb up to Clavijo castle?
Yes, it has free access and is reached on foot from the village. The ruins are not large, but the viewpoint over the Iregua valley is worth the climb.
Is there anything to visit about the 1610 Auto de fe in Logroño?
There is no dedicated museum in Logroño; the trial is known mainly through the archives and historiography, not through a specific tourist spot in the city.
We take you to Clavijo
Fifteen minutes from Logroño. We wait while you climb to the castle.
