Castles and lost souls

It is more than a cliché to affirm that all castles in Spain, as traditionally also happens in Great Britain, have their dark legends and, of course, their ghosts, in which everyone is very free to believe or not.

The most common stories -machismo aside- speak of the banshees of Muslim princesses murdered by their own father when their secret love affairs with Christian donjuanescos were discovered.

A detail that leads me to think, moreover, of those dark traditions, still in force in many Spanish towns and with all certainty in many towns of the world, of throwing the stranger to the pylon or even going further, running to him when he gets close to some of the girls of the place, who must think they have the right to pernada - or attack with horns - as happened with the nobles in the Middle Ages.

I usually think about all this -the trips give for that and much more- every time I wander through these parameric lands of Guadalajara and I see that lonely castle, erect and mysterious, dominating the plain from the heights, between whose walls, the vox populi insists in locating the wandering ghost of a Moorish maiden, who was baptized with the very Christian name of Manuela and a few years ago aroused so much expectation -among them Miguel Blanco, who dropped by to broadcast a night of vigil and spiritualism, in his program Espacio en Blanco- like the little girl Raimunda's ghost, at the Palacio de Linares in Madrid.

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