There is a lot of talk lately about walls, and there are a lot of walls, no need for me to mention them here.

But I recently explored a lesser-known wall, which had a quite different purpose than most walls…

You see, Felipe II, in the 1500s decided to build an almost 32-mile wall around his Escorial Palace (the largest Renaissance building in the world, read about it here), but not to keep people out, there were plenty of gates, but to keep wildlife in, as in hunting game, so he could hunt it!

This wall, the Cerca de Felipe II was not finished in his lifetime, nor his son’s Felipe II, nor his grandson’s Felipe IV, but continued being built into the Bourbon dynasty in the 18^th Century!

My exploration partner Jaime and his sister Teruca led the way, taking advantage that the Valdemorillo reservoir is exceptionally low due to maintenance work on the dam. After a nice walk we found the wall and a bridge!

The wall is impressive! Over 8ft tall (2,5 mts), 20 inches wide, and not a drop of cement to be seen for 32 miles!

This reminded me that I had driven past an excellently maintained part of the wall -and a gate- near our village since I was a kid! The wall has “dips” which back in the day would have sand ramps on the outside to allow animals to jump into the walled area. Once in, the animals could not escape, ergo more hunting game for the king.

At any rate, the wall nowadays about 50% gone, but some remaining bits are in excellent shape as you can see from the photos.