Castle

At some point in the Neolithic era, we had our first revolution. Farming and animal husbandry made us sedentary. The weapons we used to hunt began to be used against enemies -real, potential, or imaginary- who threatened the few assets that could be accumulated. Perhaps the scarcity of food could have been the beginning of these conflicts. The specialization of social functions was born, and the fear of losing accumulated assets created leaders and warriors who, due to their violence and control of weapons, easily achieved economic, social, political, and symbolic control over the rest of the population. Thus, the members of this warrior elite who could possess more assets (and of course, those who were most afraid of losing them) were the ones who created a clientelist society that kept them and enriched them in exchange for offering real, potential, or imaginary security.

From those days until another technological revolution -the mastery of gunpowder- made the highest and strongest walls fall, we never stopped looking for high and inaccessible places to make fortified villages (castros) that protected us. During the Roman Empire, the organization, strength, and mobility of their armies made those fortified villages useless. They lowered us all from the heights and housed us in well-designed and well-serviced cities, but still, often, especially in border areas or by the sea, and later, when the empire began to weaken, walls were built around the large populations, turning many of their cities into fortresses. The fall of Constantinople was caused by Mehmed II’s Turkish artillery and was the beginning of the end of the walls. They could no longer defend everyone, and defensive tactics evolved into the construction of castles and citadels that only protected a few and hardly offered shelter to the entire population.

In the particular case of the Iberian Peninsula, where there was a religious war that lasted more than seven centuries, the construction of castles was prolific. The entire geography where the conflict took place is dotted with these military constructions, and it is rare to find a city where its old part has not been established around a Castilian or Arab castle or fortress.

When there were no longer any war reasons to exist, some castles were built without any other reason than to highlight the power of their owners, who marked their difference in this way and, incidentally, protected their status and possessions; as we all know, fear is free. This fear still exists and is widespread, and the feeling that intimidators want to convey is that the danger is closer and closer, any unsettling circumstance is good for promoting it (migration, social exclusion, ideology…) and their goal is to turn our neighbor into an enemy. Some “privileged” people, afraid of losing their security at the cost of inequality, can afford to create barriers and live isolated and protected in their fortresses -even if they are no longer made of stone- and although the state has created mechanisms to have us protected, defended, and calm, this atavistic fear of the enemy (near or far, imaginary or real) remains a great business for the sellers of “security”. Living in fear is still profitable for those who know how to take advantage of it.

Despite their warlike past and violent meaning, castles are part of a beautiful landscape that brings back memories of a distant time when there was a concern for security that as a species, we have not yet overcome.

Ernesto Cardoso

Season 2. Chapter 3	Castillo
Recording date	Octubre 6, 2019
Duration	1:58 minutes
Date of issue	January 24, 2020
Location	Sierra de Gata
Municipality	Trevejo, Cáceres. España
Image and sound	Ernesto Cardoso
Edition	Ernesto Cardoso
Opusculum	Ernesto Cardoso
Music	Chad Crouch
Song	Headwaters