Moya, a town on the boundary of three kingdoms

The key to the frontier

Moya occupies a rounded hill at 1,149 metres, at the eastern end of the province of Cuenca, where Castile, Aragon and Valencia met. People lived there from the Middle Bronze Age, and Roman coins minted in Bílbilis have been found there. The Castilians took it in 1183. Alfonso VIII resettled it and granted a fuero (town charter), which Chamocho dates to 1210. It does not survive: two lost manuscripts are known, one in Latin and the other in the vernacular, and a 1625 letter from the castle governor Baltasar Cavallón, who said he had seen the Latin version.

Moya headed a large territory. In 1222, Cañete became its dependent village and came under its charter. Its estates had towers, such as Mijares, in Landete, sold in 1235 to the Hospital de Santiago. And the frontier was active: in the 14th century the mayor of Ademuz, who chose to ignore a peace between Castile and Aragon, entered the rento, an isolated farmstead in the hills, of Orchova with armed men and took cloth and livestock worth 15,000 marabetinos. The people of Moya complained to the King of Aragon, Pedro IV, who gave ten days for its return. Today, at the Mojón Triginio, the three frontier villages meet every May.

Captives and customs

In 1211 the Casa de la Merced, the Hospital de Moya, was founded to ransom Christian captives, organised by the Order of Santiago, under which the town came in 1215. The hospital in turn held Muslim captives for exchange. In December 1234, the council and Commander Gonzalo Díaz signed an agreement over six who had escaped and were in Requena in the hands of its knights and foot soldiers; the six were valued at 1,200 maravedíes.

At the Torre de San Roque, on the north-eastern slope, Moya was a puerto seco (inland customs post): there the lezda, a customs duty, was levied on goods passing from one kingdom to another. The town had five walled enclosures and eight gates, a coracha, a wall protecting access to water, descending to the Torre del Agua, six churches, a convent and two hospitals: the historic ensemble.

Marquises and rebels

Moya was under direct royal jurisdiction from 1319, and in 1480 became a marquisate for Andrés de Cabrera and Beatriz de Bobadilla, its great years. In 1520 and 1521, during the Revolt of the Comuneros, the town rose twice against its lord. The title later joined the House of Villena through marriage.

How it emptied

Decline began in the 18th century: the great families left, and towards its end Moya lost the corregimiento, its administrative district, and court to Cañete; the parishes were reduced to two and convents closed. In 1808 it rose against Napoleon. The sale of confiscated property and the new administration separated the 36 villages under its jurisdiction, and in 1835 Cabrera’s Carlist troops attacked and destroyed the town. Inhabitants gradually moved down to the neighbourhoods on the plain. The last left the old town in the 1950s.

In April 1975 the BOE, the official state gazette, announced the fifth auction of the castle ruins, with a starting price of 50,000 pesetas. In 1982 the town was declared a historic-artistic ensemble. Only Santa María la Mayor remains in use for worship.