Medieval Spain's Sinister Torture Castle (Season 2) | Holy Marvels with Dennis Quaid
Some fortifications are built to protect.
Others are constructed to punish.
In 15th century Spain,
one notorious castle becomes a place of torture and terror.
In the Spanish town of Cordoba,
there is the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos.
It means the castle of the Christian monarchs.
When you first approach the castle,
you'll first notice it's imposing walls
made of solid stone blocks.
Inside is a one acre complex.
You can climb the towers, view ancient ruins,
see the live archeological digs.
It was all built in 1328 by Alfonso XI of Castile.
In the late 1470s, the castle gets two new occupants,
Christian monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
As Ferdinand and Isabella's seat of power,
the castle sees some pretty important moments in history.
For instance, this is where the royal couple
famously meets Christopher Columbus
about financing his voyages to the new world.
But in 1499, the palace starts to serve
a much darker purpose.
The king and queen donate the castle to the Catholic church.
And the reason they need to do this
is because the church needs a Cordoba headquarters
for the infamous Spanish Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition is a 350 year period
of religious persecution that started around 1478,
during which Spain's monarchs collude with the church
to unite the country by making Catholicism
the nation's only religion by force.
The castle is renovated to accomplish this mission.
So they take this fortress,
constructed to keep invaders out,
and they turn it into a prison
to keep religious dissenters in.
They build a new tower called the Tower of the Inquisition.
And this is where the main interrogation rooms
and prison cells are located.
The cells are positioned around a central courtyard
of the Western wing of the building.
The baths are turned into torture cells
and into places of interrogation.
The balcony where you're supposed to survey
who's coming at you is now meant to survey
who's trying to escape.
Leading the charge here is head inquisitor,
Diego Rodriguez de Lucero.
According to the church,
Lucero's job is to root out heretics.
And as a result, he's given free reign
to apprehend, to torture, or kill
anyone who is not a Christian.
He earns the nickname El Tenebrero,
the bringer of darkness, because of his sadism,
because of his terror tactics.
One famous example of his cruelty happens in 1504
when a cleric is accused of preaching doctrines of Judaism.
Lucero rounds up a list of 107 people
who attended those services,
and he burns them alive at a single public burning.
For others, death doesn't come as quickly.
Various torture methods are used on prisoners
to elicit information or confessions to heresy.
The inquisitors would use waterboarding
as well as something called garrucha,
where a prisoner's hands are bound behind their back
and suspended from a pulley,
letting gravity painfully dislocate their arms.
Lucero also has this habit of identifying young women
and compelling them to do as he wishes
with the power of the inquisition.
According to historical documents,
in one case, he kidnaps the wife
of a local Christian named Julian Trigueros.
Trigueros seeks justice from King Ferdinand,
who agrees there should be a trial,
but the trial is overseen by Lucero.
Not surprisingly, it ends with Trigueros
being burned alive 10 days later
and his wife being locked away in the castle
as Lucero's mistress.
In one of the worst accounts we have
from the castle's secret prison,
an unnamed female prisoner is raped,
resulting in the birth of a child.
Eventually, the mother is taken to be burned
with the child in her arms.
Lucero is operating this castle with impunity,
and powers that be actually do not have a problem with it
because those who he kills or expels,
the state assumes their money,
assumes their estates, assumes whatever they have.