A state between two kingdoms: the Lordship of Molina

A land on the border

Few Spanish places carry history so strongly in their names. Villages belong to the Señorío; the city is Molina de Aragón, although in Castile; and “the land” means something precise: town and villages governing themselves together under their own laws for almost seven centuries.

It begins on a frontier. In the 11th century Molina headed a small Andalusi taifa. The Cantar de mio Cid remembers its governor Abengalbón, the Moorish friend welcoming the Cid and his people. In 1128 or 1129, depending on sources, Alfonso I the Battler of Aragón took it, but Castile undertook resettlement. Two kingdoms claimed the same land.

Manrique de Lara, lord “by the grace of God”

The solution was a third party. Manrique Pérez de Lara, Castile’s most powerful noble and trusted by both kings, mediated the 1137 agreement of Carrión. Castile returned Calatayud and Daroca to Aragón, and both accepted Manrique as lord of Molina and Mesa. In 1138 a lordship dependent on neither crown began. Its rulers signed Dei gratia, “by the grace of God”, like kings and bishops.

On 21 April 1154, Manrique granted a fuero, a charter recording established customs related to other frontier charters. It organised town neighbourhoods into colaciones and the territory into villages. Each year on a late-summer Sunday near Saint Michael’s Day, residents elected the judge, keeper of the council seal, alcaldes, jurados and Caballeros de la Sierra, watching woods and pasture. Election required being a caballero, which meant owning a good horse and battle-ready weapons. Those defending a frontier also governed it.

Manrique died in 1164 at Huete, fighting the Castro family over the guardianship of child-king Alfonso VIII, and was buried at Santa María de Huerta. His descendants ruled Molina for over a century.

Doña Blanca

Molina’s most remembered figure is Blanca Alfonso de Molina, its fifth ruler. Inheriting in 1272, she always lived in Molina. She expanded the charter three times, first at the council’s and villages’ request, reserving principal offices for the town’s knights. She completed the castle, preserving Doña Blanca’s Tower, and founded San Francisco monastery in 1284. Her 1280 church is today’s Santa Clara. The chapter of a hundred knights, thereafter called Doña Blanca’s, and the crossbowmen’s chapter are attributed to her period.

In 1285 she intercepted Aragonese troops returning with plunder and took it from them. Later she sought to marry her daughter to Aragón’s king. Her brother-in-law Sancho IV of Castile, determined that Molina should not become Aragonese, imprisoned her in Segovia’s Alcázar until she accepted his conditions.

She died in Molina in May 1293, leaving the Lordship to Sancho IV and her sister, Queen María de Molina. The small state thus entered Castile’s royal family.

A king as lord

María was queen and twice regent of Castile. On her death, 1 July 1321, the Lordship passed to her grandson Alfonso XI; thereafter its title was linked to the king’s. Molina kept its charter, council and organisation, which inheriting kings swore to respect.

That oath was tested twice. In 1369, after war between Peter I and his half-brother, Henry II gave Molina to French captain Bertrand du Guesclin. Residents rejected a foreign lord and submitted to Peter IV of Aragón. They changed de los Caballeros to de Aragón, also naming Torre de Aragón in his honour. In 1375, the Peace of Almazán returned Molina to Castile but the name remained. In 1465, Henry IV tried granting the Lordship to favourite Beltrán de la Cueva; residents defeated his troops at Rueda, forcing the king to abandon it.

Four sexmas and common land

Like Castile’s frontier communities of town and land, Molina had a principal town and villages sharing woods, pasture and obligations. There were four sexmas: Campo, Pedregal, Sabinar and Sierra. The name does not mean all communities had six districts; numbers varied. Veintenas and quiñones also divided land and burdens.

• Sexma del Campo, the largest, in the north: the upper Mesa and Piedra valleys and the plateau. Algar de Mesa, Amayas, Anchuela del Campo, Campillo de Dueñas, Chilluentes, Cillas, Concha, Cubillejo de la Sierra, Cubillejo del Sitio, Embid, Establés, Fuentelsaz, Hinojosa, Labros, Milmarcos, Mochales, Pardos, Rueda de la Sierra, Tartanedo, Torrubia, Tortuera, Villel de Mesa and La Yunta.
• Sexma del Pedregal, in the east, around the road to Teruel and Valencia. Aldehuela, Anchuela del Pedregal, Anquela del Pedregal, Castellar de la Muela, Castilnuevo, Chera, El Pobo de Dueñas, Hombrados, Morenilla, Novella, Otilla, El Pedregal, Pradilla, Prados Redondos, Setiles, Tordellego, Tordelpalo, Tordesilos, Torrecuadrada de Molina and Torremochuela.
• Sexma del Sabinar, in the west, along the Arandilla and middle and lower Gallo. Aragoncillo, Baños de Tajo, Buenafuente del Sistal, Canales de Molina, Castellote, Cobeta, Corduente, Cuevas Labradas, Cuevas Minadas, Escalera, Fuembellida, Herrería, Lebrancón, Olmeda de Cobeta, Rillo de Gallo, Selas, Taravilla, Teroleja, Tierzo, Torete, Torrecilla del Pinar, Torremocha del Pinar, Valhermoso, Valsalobre, Ventosa and Villar de Cobeta.
• Sexma de la Sierra, in the south, along Alto Tajo’s eastern bank and Sierra Molina, bordering Tierra de Cuenca. Adobes, Alcoroches, Alustante, Checa, Chequilla, Megina, Motos, Orea, Peralejos de las Truchas, Pinilla de Molina, Piqueras, Terzaga, Terzaguilla, Traíd and Villanueva de las Tres Fuentes.

Some names now denote abandoned settlements or districts; others remain independent communities. These divisions determined who grazed which pastures and cut wood in which forest. Large woods such as Sierra Molina served the whole territory for centuries.

A peaceful frontier: wool, customs and mansions

After Castile and Aragón united in the late 15th century, the border became business. Molina had a customs house between kingdoms, its territory living from wool. Under the Catholic Monarchs money arrived and the town grew.

From the 16th century families came from Navarre and the Basque Country. Enriched by livestock and land, proud of noble status, they left stone mansions: dressed-stone houses, coats of arms above doorways, wrought-iron grilles, courtyards and broad stairs, mostly 17th- and 18th-century. Notable groups survive in Milmarcos, Tortuera, Tartanedo, Embid, Setiles, Hinojosa and Peralejos de las Truchas. Embid doorways sometimes carry symbols of the livestock that enriched owners.

War made the border matter again. In 1641, Philip IV and the Count-Duke of Olivares gathered parliament and troops in Molina before marching against Catalonia’s revolt. During the War of the Spanish Succession the Señorío remained loyal to Philip V: Habsburg supporters occupied Molina in 1706, Bourbon forces recovering it that year. Wars and 18th-century epidemics began a long decline.

The end: Anguita, 1813

The Lordship remained distinct until the end. Late in the 18th century it came under Cuenca’s administration, then Guadalajara’s from 1802. During the Peninsular War, a Supreme Junta of the Lordship of Molina formed; resistance was such that French troops burned the town in retaliation. Parliament later awarded Very Noble and Very Loyal City. The 1812 Constitution still named the Señorío as a separate entity.

On 25 April 1813, during the war, Anguita constituted the Provincial Council of Guadalajara including Molina. The Lordship dissolved and its charter was abolished after almost unchanged survival for over six and a half centuries. Today’s Guadalajara province was created in 1833.

What remains

Common land survived. The Community of the Royal Lordship of Molina and its Land, based in Molina, manages rural estates, hunting grounds and other village assets, electing representatives by sexma as seven centuries ago. Modern statutes were approved in 1968. The Señorío is the only historic territory expressly named in Castilla-La Mancha’s Statute of Autonomy, which allows legal recognition as a body above municipal level.

It survives in stone: Molina’s castle, among Spain’s largest and a National Monument since 1931; the historic centre, old bridge and medieval Jewish-quarter remains at Prao de los Judíos; border castles such as Zafra, Castilnuevo and Embid; and Armallá’s saltworks, cited in the 1154 charter and described in The salt of the earth. Above all it survives in naming: people here still belong to the Señorío.

The frontier had small names

The 1404–1407 boundary proceedings between Molina and Albarracín preserve names of Sierra Molina’s springs, streams and livestock folds, references for discussing boundaries on familiar ground.

The Lordship’s history can also be followed through those words in A mountain landscape written in names.