Description
The Arenas Castle was built over the 14th century, preserving structures from the 9th to the 11th century. It sits on the Cerro del Castillo de Puerta Arenas, in the Sierra de Alta Coloma, between Granada and Jaén. The Camillo River Portillo is the only practical step to cross this saw.
Alfonso X won the castle through Peace signed with King Muhammad II year 1281. In 1462, after Henry IV's treguas, he granted to the great Moors the Constable Mr Lucas de Iranzo, with 600 men of horse and 2000 pawns attacked the castle of Camillo de Arenas on 20 April 1462. The fight was very intense and of five doors the castle had, two were burned by Christians. However, it was not achieved.
The Constable sent 30 gentlemen from Jaén to prepare an ambush to the Garrison of the Sand Camp. They were served as a spy by a renegade Moor who was a nephew of the Sand Camp Warden. The ambush was unsuccessful and after a slight skirmish the Christians returned to Jaén. In 1463, the Constable sent 40 pawns in command of Juan Navarrete, against the castle of Campillo. Christians make two prisoners for whom it was known that the garrison made up 33 Moors.
The Constable Iranzo sends 30 soldiers to try to take over Campillo, which was not done because... "they failed to be in good care." In 1471, the king of Granada, when he heard of a Christian project of attack on Campillo, sent his defenders "sufficient recuperation and people." In the letter of the Constable Iranzo to the then Pope Sixto IV, about the hasty situation of Jaén before the push of the Moors is cited as of great danger to Christians to the castle of Camillo de Arenas. Other news about our castle is given by the following chronists:
Argote de Molina in his "Nobleza de Andalucía" (1588), cites as Alcaide del Castillo de Campillo de Arenas to D. Francisco Fonseca.
Ximena Jury in his "ecclesiastical Anales" (1654), qualifies the castle of Campillo as "A strong castle on the Gate of Arenas." Espinalt in "Atlante española" (1787), says the following about the castle of Camillo de Arenas: "To the west of this villa half a leagues away, there remains a strong castle somewhat ruined, of immemorial time, as well as the Gate of Arenas held by two high peñascos that form it; it has twenty poles of latitude and through the river Valdearanzo and there is tradition that half chain that there is in the prison of this village one that put two Saracens in that door to prevent the entry of Christians of the kingdom of Jaén."
Campillo was conquered to the Moors by Mr Pedro Coello, Knight of the Vanda. His body was buried in the St. Louis of the Knights, the missing Royal Convent of San Francisco de Jaén. His epitaph said, "Here lies Pedro Coello, Knight of the Vanda, who won the Moors the castle of Arenas at their expense and died in an entrance with them, during the reign of the Catholic Kings in 1486.
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