New Castle of Manzanares el Real

The upper valley of the river Manzanares, known as El Real de Manzanares since the time of Alfonso X (1221-1284), was rich in pasture and woodland, and the powers that emerged after the Reconquista disputed it repeatedly. The communities of Villa y Tierra of Segovia and of Madrid litigated through the 13th century, and the dispute was settled in the 14th by John I of Castile (1358-1390), who granted the comarca to his mayordomo, Pedro González de Mendoza (1340-1385). To the mayordomo's eldest son, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1367-1404), Admiral of Castile, is attributed the first fortress in the area, whose remains are known as the Old Castle of Manzanares el Real, though that building likely had an earlier origin.

In the last third of the 15th century the Mendoza decided to replace the old fortress with a larger and more luxurious building, matching the political and economic influence the family had reached. The new residence was promoted by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y de la Vega (1417-1479), grandson of the admiral and first Duke of the Infantado, whose will shows the works already under way in June 1475. He died before the castle was complete, and building halted for a time.

His eldest son, Íñigo López de Mendoza y de la Vega (1438-1500), took the work up again, probably in 1480. He altered the original scheme, adding a range on the east side that much enlarged the living space, and engaged Juan Guas (1430-1496), architect to the Catholic Monarchs and author of the Palacio del Infantado at Guadalajara, to harmonise and embellish the whole. The Isabelline Gothic elements are Guas's: the southern gallery, the porticoed courtyard and the turrets crowning the corner towers. The 13th-century Romanesque-Mudéjar church of Nuestra Señora de la Nava was absorbed into the structure, and its apse and chancel arch survive in the chapel at the foot of the eastern range. The old fortress the Mendoza dismantled and abandoned, both to reuse its masonry and to keep it out of the hands of the lineage's enemies, given how close it stood to the new building.

The castle went up at a moment when, with the Reconquista practically finished and the noble houses fully settled, fortress-building answered less to defensive need than to the wish to project an image of wealth and power; machicolations, merlons, loopholes and ditches were made subordinate to the concept of a seigneurial mansion. Under a military face the Mendoza raised a palace in which aesthetic concerns prevailed. A barbican wall some five metres high rings the main block, opened with gun-ports fitted to take artillery and carved with the cross of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, a title held by Cardinal Mendoza.

In the time of Íñigo López de Mendoza y Pimentel (1493-1566), fourth Duke of the Infantado, barely a century after it was finished, the castle stood practically uninhabited, the activity of the duchy having settled on the city of Guadalajara. His death made the neglect worse: economic troubles and lawsuits broke out among the heirs of the House of Mendoza.

The ducal house paid for a first restoration in 1914, the work of Vicente Lampérez y Romea (1861-1923), who applied anastylosis and historicist criteria to structures such as the porticoed courtyard, by then completely ruined. The castle was declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico in 1931. It served as one of the locations for the film El Cid in 1961, and a second campaign in 1964, paid for by the administration and directed by José Manuel González Valcárcel, was aimed at creating a museum of castles.

In 1965 Íñigo de Arteaga y Falguera (1905-1997), eighteenth Duke of the Infantado, ceded the use of the castle to the Diputación Provincial de Madrid, whose consolidation works allowed the monument to open to visitors from 1977. In 1982 it hosted the act constituting the Assembly of Parliamentarians for Madrid, at which the committee drafting the regional Statute of Autonomy presented its text; with the statute in force in 1983 the site passed to the Community of Madrid, which also received ten Flemish tapestries of the 17th century, among them five of a Life of Julius Caesar. A new museum and tourism plan followed in 2005, and a garden of Renaissance inspiration was opened in 2013. The castle remains the property of the Duchy of the Infantado; its administration and use rested until January 2025 with the tourism directorate of the Community of Madrid, which allowed visits and public and institutional events.