Badajoz

Badajoz rises on the left bank of the Guadiana a few kilometres from the Portuguese border. Ibn Marwan, expelled from Mérida, founded it around 875 on a hill above the river; in the eleventh century it became the capital of a small independent kingdom whose library was among the greatest of the Arab world. Alfonso IX of León took it on 19 March 1230, and under Alfonso X the new bishopric began work on the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista beside the old Moorish citadel.

Its position on the frontier shaped everything that followed. In 1336 Afonso IV of Portugal besieged the town until a Castilian army routed him. A Jewish community lived here from the eleventh century until 1492, when Badajoz became a crossing point for refugees fleeing into Portugal and then a centre of smuggling. In 1524 Spanish and Portuguese delegates met in the town hall to settle the rival claims to the Spice Islands. Philip II moved his whole court here in August 1580 to claim the Portuguese crown, and Queen Anne died in the city two months later. The Portuguese attacked again in the Restoration War from 1640, and the French and British fought over the walls in 1811 and 1812.