The city of Tordesillas is famous for being the place where Spain and Portugal divided the Americas.
The first thing we saw here were the so-called “Treaty Houses” — two connected palaces, named so because the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed here in 1494. Under the agreement, Spain and Portugal divided the territories of the New World they had begun to colonize.
“Wow, these are literally the houses where the New World was divided!” Arian was amazed.
The treaty established an imaginary meridian about 1,770 km west of the Cape Verde Islands. Everything west of this line belonged to Spain, while everything east belonged to Portugal. At the time, however, there were no accurate maps of the world. As a result, part of the coast of what is now Brazil turned out to lie east of the line — and therefore in the Portuguese zone.
When Pedro Álvares Cabral reached the shores of modern-day Brazil in 1500, Portugal claimed these lands under the terms of the treaty. Spain did not object because, formally, the agreement had been respected. The discrepancy arose from the limited geographical knowledge of the time: it was easy to draw a line on a map, but much harder to determine its exact position in the real world. Portugal simply took advantage of the favorable circumstances and consolidated its control over the territory.
Long before that, Tordesillas had been a fortified town designed to protect its inhabitants from Muslim raids.
“Here, all the churches look like well-fortified fortresses!” my son noted.
The most interesting building is the Royal Monastery of Santa Clara, housed in a palace built by order of King Alfonso XI in 1350 and later converted into a monastery by his son, Pedro I the Cruel. Its facade, influenced by the Almohad style, immediately catches the eye. The complex also preserves Arab baths and the magnificent chapel of the Saldanha family.
We visited the Plaza Mayor, where the town hall is located, and crossed a medieval bridge with ten spans. Thanks to its solid stone foundations, the bridge has survived to this day and is still used by pedestrians.
The remains of the ancient walls that once surrounded the entire town are scattered throughout Tordesillas. These ruins impressed me most of all. I don't know exactly why, but I always feel a certain awe when I stand before them. Perhaps it is because they make the fragility of our world tangible: what once seemed permanent can eventually become nothing more than a few stones left standing.
The text was originally written in Ukrainian translated with the help of Google Translate.
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