Peñafiel

Don Juan Manuel made Peñafiel the favourite of all his scattered lands and rebuilt its castle and walls, but under Peter I the lordship was suppressed, and in 1367 the town was joined to the Crown of Castile. The crown soon handed it on to its own princes. Ferdinand of Antequera held it as Duke of Peñafiel, and his son John, the future king of Aragon, lived in the castle, where his first son, Charles of Viana, was born in 1421. John's revolt against John II of Castile cost the castle dearly: the king took it in 1451 and ordered it demolished. Five years later Henry IV let Pedro Girón, master of the Order of Calatrava, raise it again on the long, narrow ridge above the town, and the fortress he built, shaped like a ship along the hilltop, carried the Girón arms on its keep.