Abandonment and plunder


Rocha Forte is the material metaphor of a historical process marked by violence, conflict and death. Its walls have witnessed political assassinations and siege wars and while it was a medieval Titanic that resisted wars and sieges, the fortress was reduced to ashes in 1466-67. Some years after its destruction, in 1472, the archbishop ordered the dismantling of the walls, which were taken stone by stone to build the fortress of Pico Sacro . 

Peasants would also reuse the stone from the old fortress in the centuries to come and the remains of the walls would become the fences of their plots. The mist of a forgotten past wrapped a place away from the city in legends and mystery, a traumatic and unconformable spot in the contemporary history of Santiago. 

For two centuries, between mid-13th and mid-15th century, Santiago had a formidable fortress, the biggest in the Kingdom of Galicia and among the most spectacular in the Iberian Peninsula. An impressive building, the archbishop’s residence, an impregnable bastion, a truly fortified town… A Rocha Forte was many things but first and foremost it was the centrepiece of the struggle for power between the City Council of Santiago and the archbishops in the Late Middle Ages. But the Castle of Rocha Forte had no luck. The destruction caused by the Irmandiños and later systematic plundering of its remains almost literally wiped it off the face of the earth. 



vade retro Satanás, the marks left by treasure hunters in the old ruins.