Alone With the Wind at Peracense Castle

It may seem surprising considering the varied places I have been, but I don’t really think of myself as natural and avid traveler. I find much of the process exhausting and overstimulating, often feeling like I need a vacation from my vacation. This can be quite a difficult attitude when living in a city that pretty much vacates every weekend and all summer. Also, traveling is an incredible luxury that isn’t available to many people and wasn’t available to me for a very long time either so I do feel I should take advantage of it when I can (and want to).

In general, the easiest way to get me to go somewhere is to tell me I can see a castle. Or you can tell me I can go swimming. These are not really connected; I just miss water. A fact that probably led to my willingness to explore Mascún Canyon. (Hmm, I should really try to find a way to connect swimming and castles to make a dream trip.)

When traveling, I’m constantly staring out the windows of cars, buses, and trains, studying the horizon to discern if the hilltops are made up of castles or, well, just hunks of rocks. I love a good castle. So, let me give you a warning: If you go anywhere with me in Spain, I will point out every castle I see, whether near or far, and I will want to visit it. Telling me it’s mostly destroyed will not sway me. In fact, it might only increase my desire to see it.

Luckily for me, my partner has not yet grown tired of my castle obsession and planned for us to stop at Castillo de Peracense in Teruel, Aragón on our way to Albarracín for one of those rare weekend trips I agreed to. We left Madrid in the afternoon and made a couple of stops so it was approaching early evening when we made it to the town of Ródenas, where we had to take the road to the castle. As we drove a narrow, local road through the small town, we saw absolutely nobody, that is, until we were stopped by five or six older gentlemen digging up the road. Well, actually, I’m pretty sure only one was digging and the others were standing around watching and, very likely, providing extremely crucial advice. Some human traits seem nearly universal across cultures. It’s comforting, really.

With an exaggerated, sweeping arm gesture, one of the onlookers earned his keep by directing us to turn right and go around, which, we did, except for the going around part because the other two left turns seemed to lead respectively back to the same construction and a dead end. Instead, we continued straight on a somewhat main road out of the village and into a flat stretch of farmland.

“There can’t possibly be a castle here,” we agreed. “Who builds a castle in the flatlands with no river nearby?” So back we went, selecting the turn in Ródenas that looked like it went back to the construction. We figured that we could ask those very busy men. In the end, the road did lead to construction, but new construction, which a bunch of younger, helmeted men wearing neon yellow like proper construction workers. “How much construction is there in this small village,” I wondered. We turned, finally, onto what we hoped was now the correct road. Before long, it started climbing gently up, which is always a promising way to get to a castle.

When we arrived at the castle, there was only another car and a couple of people on motorbikes who soon left. The remaining car was the castle caretaker, who was manning the small, glass-enclosed entrance kiosk. After paying, we passed through the outer wall and were completely alone inside the castle.

Castillo de Peracense is unique in that it is completely made of red stone, which is predominant in the region. It has been restored and has a really nice collection of reproductions of horrifying machines of war, such as the “wheel of fire.” A monstrous device typical of people’s macabre ingenuity that you fill with hay or straw, light on fire, and roll down a hill at your enemies. Feel free to shudder.

After checking out the collection and walking portions of the outer wall, I casually walked through the inner wall, stopping briefly at a picturesque tree coming out of a crack in stones of the inner wall. As I passed under the arched doorway of the wall, all I could see was the dominating red citadel that had seemingly emerged spontaneously from a massive cliff. Everything froze—my steps, my mind, my breath—everything but the wind sliding over the grass and through my hair.

I imagine it’s impossible to be underwhelmed by Castillo de Peracense, but I can’t imagine seeing it looking more dramatic than it did that day—the thick, ominous clouds, the waning light, the cold wind, the solitude, the plunging cliffs. I told my partner it was my favorite castle I’ve ever seen, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was my most favorite castle experience.

Before going into the main citadel, we hunted around as many nooks and hidden places as we could find within the inner walls. There were bones littering much of the interior yard, evidence from the time before it was reconstructed when people kept sheep there.

Once in the main citadel, we could see places where the original stairs had extended down the walls and how, in some places, the stairs and massive stone that supported the citadel were made one—an eroded, steep, and narrow entrance to the final and highest point within the walls. Here, we found huge water reservoirs and a small nest tucked into a ledge.

On the other side of about 75% of the castle’s walls is a sheer drop that leads to the remains of the town and farms from the era of the castle and the modern town of Peracense, which lays further below in the valley. Just on the other side of a small hollow past the now destroyed, historical village, I could make out a cave leading into a small, rocky plateau. I stared at that cave, perhaps I could combine two things I love—secret places and caves.

As we left, just before closing time, we asked the caretaker about this mysterious cave across the way, mostly to see if it was worth visiting. He said that entrance is small and badly overgrown but that the inside is larger and appears to have been carved out. Nobody knows what it might have been used for—shelter, worship, storage, something else.

After leaving, we walked across the parking area to have a snack at an overlook where you could see the castle and the town of Peracense below. Mixed into the wind, the grinding of the modern castle doors echoed around us as the caretaker closed up for the night. Then, we heard the low rumble of his van as he drove away, leaving us truely alone with the castle.

In the end, we decided against a short trip down to the cave, as we still had to get to Albarracín and did not have on appropriate clothes for crawling through the brush. Still, as we scurried through the wind to the car, I imagined pushing away the brush and crawling until the space above me opened up. Would it feel just like any other cave, or would I feel the sense of a purpose that has now been lost.