It was built as a fortress in the 10th century. It was subsequently transformed into a barracks for the Guardia Civil. And soon it will be a four-star rural hotel. The Ministry of the Interior managed to sell the castle it owned in the municipality of Maqueda (Toledo, 504 inhabitants) – known colloquially as the tricorn castle and which was declared a historical-artistic monument in 1931― and which they had been trying to get rid of since 2013 to make money.
The buyer is the Canarian company América de Construcciones y Turismo SL (Amcotur), which will pay 3.25 million euros for the bastion with the intention of transforming it into a hotel establishment with the commitment to rehabilitate and conserve both the walls and the existing interiors, as confirmed by sources from the Fernando Grande Marlaska department.
The price that the company – which owns five other hotels, including one located in another castle, that of Olmillos de Sasamón, in Burgos – will have to pay is less than half of the 7.4 million euros that the Government invested at the time to build a modern concrete building with three floors and a basement in the parade ground with a constructed area of 3,060 square meters to house the archive and permanent museum of the armed institute. It is precisely this modern structure that Amcotur intends to exploit to use it as a hotel. The sale, agreed directly on October 28 without resorting to auction, will be formalized in the next few days with signature in front of a notary after the hotel company has already paid a deposit of 162,710 euros, according to one of the sources consulted. For now the property is still for sale on the ministry’s website. This newspaper made unsuccessful attempts to contact the hotel company.
The sale of Maqueda Castle – also known as Castillo de la Vela – was eventful. In 2001, the then government of José María Aznar began renovation work on this fortress, located on the Extremadura road, 75 kilometers from Madrid, to transform it into the headquarters of the historical archive of the Civil Guard. After the victory of the PSOE in the 2004 elections, the plan became more ambitious. The new director general of the armed institute, General Carlos Gómez Arruche, proposed that, in addition to housing the archive, it would also be the corpse museum and house the institute’s abundant historical collections.
However, plans to transform it into an archive and museum were thwarted when some panels and display cases were even installed inside. The 2008 economic crisis frustrated them and, in July 2013, Mariano Rajoy’s government included Maqueda Castle in the list of 15,135 public real estate assets it put up for sale to raise funds. Since then it has been put up for public auction nine times without success through the State Security Infrastructure and Installations Management (Giese, Interior Ministry employee).
On a first occasion, in September 2014, Interior aspired to profit from the sale of the castle and set a starting price of 9.58 million, more than two million more than the cost of the renovation works. The incentive was that the land had and has residential, commercial, public or semi-public, hotel or entertainment use, according to municipal regulations, and, therefore, capable of being converted into apartments or accommodation facilities. However, no one bid on the building.
After that first failure, in the second auction, in October 2015, Interni lowered the starting price to 7.47 million (with the option to go down to 6.73 million). But he didn’t even sell it. In September 2016 he tried again at a much lower price: 5.9 million. Since then, the price continued to fall in subsequent auctions until it hit bottom in March 2022, when it was auctioned for 2.76 million euros. Even then no one was interested. In August 2023 Interior raised the price to 3.25 million. It maintained the same price at the last known auction, last January. Now the direct sale to the hotel group has been made for the same amount which, according to Interior, is “the estimated price, without any reduction”.
Andrés Congosto, mayor of Maqueda, said in a telephone conversation with this newspaper that he has no information on the sale, although he admits that in recent months several companies, including some hotels, have contacted the municipality to find out if it is possible to carry out a renovation of the building that was built on the parade ground. Congosto underlines that in recent years he has maintained contacts with both the minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, and with officials of the Secretariat of State for Democratic Memory, to find a destination for the property. “We have always received good words, but little else,” he complains.
“We have always asked that it be used as a museum, hotel or conference center, so that it could represent a tourist and economic driver for the area,” he adds. The other big request was to be able to visit the inside of the building, which is currently impossible due to the closure. “Since it is close to the highway, many people stop to visit it and find that they can’t because it is closed,” says Congosto, who adds that the castle is in perfect condition because when it suffered some damage, the Interior was tasked with repairing it.
Giese currently has seven other properties for sale, including the former Civil Guard barracks in Blanes (Girona, for 250,000 euros); in Linares (Jaén, for 1.3 million euros) and in Torrelles de Foix (Barcelona, for 290,000 euros); the old customs house of Valencia de Alcántara (Cáceres) for just over 50,000 euros; or the building that housed the Calatayud police station (Zaragoza, for 320 thousand euros).
