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Gélida Castle, in Alt Penedès, is one of the most notable fortifications in this region. It offers splendid views of the Montserrat mountain, as we see in this report in La Vanguardia Readers' Photos.
The castle is on the northern slope of the Ordal mountain range, at an altitude that ranges between 255 and 295 meters. Its structure extends over a rocky spur that has an inclination in a southeast/northwest direction, and is accessible only from the upper and lower ends.
This spur is delimited by the Cantillepa torrent on the south side, and by the Sant Miquel torrent to the north, although in this case with an intermediate plain that shows signs of occupation possibly since medieval times.
Right at the edge of the plain with the cliff that separates it from the Sant Miquel torrent, the very damaged remains of a construction that seems to correspond to an advanced tower are preserved.
The terminus of the castle of Gélida formed a strip perpendicular to the Sierra del Ordal and the Prelitoral depression, cut from east to west by the Anoia river, which corresponds to the current municipal terms of Gélida and Sant Llorenç d'Hortons, in Al ´Regrets
Within this territory, the churches of San Lorenzo (current parish of Sant Llorenç de Hortons) are documented in 945; Sant Pere del castillo de Gelida, in 998; the church of San Juan Samora, in 1080; and the chapel and the place that appear mentioned in the documentation as the villa and church of Sant Miquel, in 1061.
The visible structures today are the result of a historical process throughout which phases of abandonment and reconstruction have occurred, also marked by changes in the functionality of the spaces.
It should also be said that it is one of the few castles where, in recent years, consolidation works and archaeological excavations have been carried out.
The origin of the Gélida castle, as well as that of the majority of the fortresses of the defensive line of which it is a part, must be sought at the time of the repopulation of the right side of the Llobregat, which began with Guifré I, starting from 878.
The castrum of Gélida is mentioned in the document of sale of the castle of Masquefa by count Mir en Ennec Bonfill in the year 963; it is again mentioned as the boundary of the castle of Cervelló in the sale made by Ramon Borrell and Ermengol I to the same Ennec Bonfill, in 992.
Shortly after, in the year 998, we find Ennec Bonfill, now in possession of the Castle of Gélida, later making a donation to the monastery of Sant Cugat and exchanging it almost immediately for the castle of Masquefa and other possessions, thus leaving Gélida in the hands of Enec Bonfill .
The historian Lleo Bergadà refers in his article to a sale of the castle by the abbot of Sant Cugat to the count of Barcelona in 992, and from this passage to Bonfill. I have not been able to find any document that confirms this news, whose origin is also not mentioned by Bergadà.
We know nothing about the fate or role of the Castle at the time of the great raid of Al-Mansur in the year 985, nor in the subsequent ones, from 1000-1001 and 1003, however, we know what the effects on nearby areas are. Like Barcelona and Manresa, it can be deduced that the castle, in all probability, suffered.
In 1053, a dispute arose between Umbert, lord of Gélida, and the monastery of Santa Cecilia due to the former's behavior towards the inhabitants of the Sorba village, located in Gélida and owned by the aforementioned monastery. Umbert was not only demanding the "forcia y tolta" from the inhabitants of the village, but he was also forcing them to work with their oxen, to give a pound of wax to the church of Sant Llorenç and to work on the castle construction all the time. week.
After repentance, Umbert agreed with the monastery, among other things, that the inhabitants of the allodium would be obliged to work one day a week on the construction of the castle.
It is clear that in the middle of the 11th century work was being done in the castle, with a personal contribution of work from the inhabitants of the Sorba village, together, although the documentation does not mention it, with the rest of the inhabitants of the area. Establishing a correspondence between this reference in the documents and some structures of the castle is currently difficult.
The last data we have, corresponding to the 11th century, and more specifically from the end, refers to the commitment to hand over Gélida Castle by Guerau Alemany, lord at the time, to the archbishop of Tarragona. This has its origins in Berenguer Ramon II's commission to said Guerau and two other men to conduct the reconstruction operations of the city, a company that was not successful at that time.
Upon entering the 12th century, as detailed in a document in 1108, the Almoravid raid that took place this year and that devastated the entire Penedès and destroyed the Olèrdola castle was stopped at the castle of Gélida. We can cite few data that refer to the castle in this century and that are not very specific: in 1125 we find Pere Ramon de "Gilida" as a Castilian; Twenty-five years later, Guerau Alemany gave the castle to his wife Saurina, as a nuptial.
In 1193 Guerau left the castle to his son Guillem, as stated in his will, among the characters who signed it was "Bernardi de Lelida", Castlán at this time, whose will we know, from 1197, in which he bequeathed the Castlania to her son Bernat
(In the Middle Ages, this was the name given to someone who had the government and jurisdiction of a castle and a portion of the attached property or castle, in immediate possession, although without any right over the useful domain, in the name of the lord who had entrusted them. , sometimes for life, but generally temporary or accidental. He could not place subcastlán without the consent of his lord. Since the 14th century, castellans began to be replaced by mayors, wardens and castle captains).
The documentary sources we know from the 13th century make reference to the castle because of the wills of Guillermo I de Cervelló, in 1226, and that of Guerau VI de Cervelló, in 1229, who died during the conquest of Mallorca.
Guerau's possessions would pass to his daughter Felipa, and from her to her uncle William II; His son, Guerau VII, sold the barony of Cervelló, including the castle of Gélida, to Jaume II in the year 1297. Within the same century, before the aforementioned sale, Guillem de Cervelló gave the university to the parishioners of The privilege of using, sharpening and preserving peasant tools for cultivating the fields was frozen, establishing a place or house where they were manufactured and fertilized under the name of Ferrería, whose name is still preserved by one of the town's farmhouses.
In 1267 he freed the inhabitants of Gélida from some of these bad practices. From Ennec Bonfill to Guerau VII, Gélida Castle was in the hands of the Cervelló. We have seen how the latter sold it to James II in 1297, who liberated it in 1309, along with other possessions and 180,000 salaries, to the Countess Sibila I of Pallars in exchange for all the castles that she owned in Berguedà (except that of Roset ) and the town of Berga.
From 1345 onwards there was some confusion regarding the possession of the castle: while some authors put it in the hands of the Montcada family, others put it in the hands of the judge of Arborea, who was undoubtedly lord of the castle in 1358. Shortly afterwards it was sold by Eimeric VI, viscount of Narbonne and married to Beatriz de Arborea, in Berenguer Bertrán, around 1367. Berenguer Bertrán, citizen of Barcelona, banker who made numerous loans to Pedro III during the war with Castile, sued with the university of Gélida, since he intended to make his men work on the repair works of the castle.
(Medieval universities began to be founded in different cities of Western Europe from approximately 1150 onwards. They were communities of teachers and students -universitas- that, although their main function was teaching, were also dedicated to the production of knowledge, generating vigorous debates and controversies).
The document of the ruling of this lawsuit from 1368 is truly interesting. Both from its content and from the observation of the remains of the castle, it can be deduced that at the time Berenguer Bertrán bought it, the castle work, at least in the area of Plaza del Pedró, was in a ruinous state.
Although the historians Lluís Monreal and Martí de Riquer do not see any important works corresponding to this moment, we believe that it was on that date that the wall on the west side of the Pedró and the crownings of a good part of the walls of this building were rebuilt. zone.
In the sentence we quote, among other utensils that the gentleman must provide to carry out the works, the "tapieras" are mentioned, a word that we could update as formwork.
Throughout the Pedró area you can see a notable reconstruction made precisely with this construction technique.
The works that the Bertráns would carry out in the castle would hardly be limited to these; A good part of the Gothic work must correspond to that moment or to an immediate one.
In 1375 Berenguer Bertrán made a will ordering that he be buried in the church of Sant Pere del Castell if he died there or in a nearby place. This must have happened since his grave is preserved in the church.
As a consequence of the dispute between the Count of Urgell, after the compromise of Caspe, in 1412, a bombard was stolen from the castle (considered the oldest portable firearm of all, it was a very primitive piece of artillery that would end up being a precursor of the cannon), with the intention of transporting it to Balaguer. This transport was stopped in Igualada and the bombardment returned to the castle.
In 1465, King Pedro, constable of Portugal, stayed in the castle; Shortly after, Francisco Bertrán, who had taken sides against Juan II, was taken prisoner in the battle of Calaf and saw the fortress of Gélida seized until his loyalty to the king was demonstrated.
Except for references to the holders of the Gélida lordship, news about the castle is becoming increasingly scarce. The signature of an apoca by Jordà Prades, Gélida's master builder, gives us news of the construction of a window in the castle room in 1564.
During the War of the Reapers the castle was called because of the 24 pounds and 8 salaries that the common people paid to the guards, exactly in the year 1651. Thirty years later, in 1681, in an inventory ordered by Leonor de Marimon, we find: "Item is the aforementioned house of the gentlemen, located in the said municipality of Gélida in the neighborhood of St. Miguel, which today is almost completely demolished."
The house, or remains, still exist today and are still known as the House of the Lord. The origin of the house must be sought in the abandonment of life in the castle, already excessively uncomfortable. The castle of Gélida did not have a different fate than the majority of castles in Catalonia: in 1714 it was destroyed, even if only symbolically, with the collapse of the keep. The construction was made of rubble as early as 1780, when the priest asked permission to take stone for the construction of the church's bell tower. It will be the penultimate work in the castle; The last will be the installation of the cemetery, in 1856.
The Marquis of Cerdanyola and Teresa de Dalmau had lawsuits with the parish priest in 1828 and were the last jurisdictional lords of Gélida. Later, on an imprecise date, it passed to the Altimires family, who sold it to the Gélida City Council in 1968, becoming property of the population.
The first structures of Gélida Castle occupied the upper half of the spur where it sits. The lower part of the fortification was closed by a rectangular tower that extended its entire width and closed the passage, on the platform that had been left to the west by the stone extraction in this sector.
Outside the castle enclosure, occupying the lower half of the spur, we find the church of Sant Pere, with several anthropomorphic tombs associated with the foot area and the head.
In the highest part, a powerful wall closes the enclosure on the most vulnerable side, defining behind what will be the sovereign enclosure. Between it and the lower tower stretched a space protected by the cliff and an incipient wall, where traces of lacework and channels in the rock can still be identified, probable witnesses of the habitat structures that occupied it.
The church of Sant Pere was in this phase a rectangular building, with an entrance on the north side, supposedly closed at the head by a quadrangular apse.
On the west façade a mullioned window from that time is preserved. The building was covered with a double-sloped beam roof, some traces of which can still be seen inside. The walls are made of small irregular ashlars, hilled with lime mortar and originally plastered.
The tower, of notable height, was built using the opus spicatum construction technique. At a later time, the west facing was covered on the outside with a wall that has a plinth of ocher-colored bioclastic stoneware ashlars, belonging to the lower-middle Miocene, of very good workmanship, on which a work of ashlars is superimposed. medium and small stones of limestone, dolomitic limestone and dolomites, with varied colorations from gray to pink, which are visible under a layer of partially preserved plaster.
This same sequence is identified in the upper part, where we find a tower with an irregular polygonal plan with facings that use the opus spicatum technique, to which facings are attached on both sides with the same construction pattern of ocher ashlars and calcareous ashlars covered with plaster.
The upper complex was completed with a rectangular tower that, in a second moment, was covered on the outside giving it the current rounded shape and also using ocher stoneware ashlars at the base.
The upper access to the castle was lateral, through a walkway over the Cantillepa torrent, and a set of walls that defined an elbow entrance of which some vestiges are still preserved.
Both documentary and archaeological information record construction work on the castle until the 14th century. It does not seem that during this time the perimeter of the fortification was expanded, but its towers were reinforced.
Despite the difficulty of dating, it is very possible that in this period the tower was bent on the outside. There is no doubt that the east wall of the tower also bends on the outside. It cannot be determined whether the circular tower was built in this period and expanded later, at the end of the 14th century, within the next stage.
In April 1991, an excavation campaign was carried out inside and outside (north and northeast sides) of the tower at the eastern end of the middle enclosure of the castle, which separated the area where the church was located from the area of codinas and of the sovereign enclosure.
The excavation, carried out by Mireia Mestre, allowed us to carefully analyze the evolution of the buildings that were built in this place, from the sawmill where the castle was built narrows to a width of only about 20 m.
The main purpose of this excavation campaign was to obtain archaeological data from the founding moment, which according to written documents must be prior to the year 1000.
The excavation may not have made it clearer, however, it has provided interesting information. A stage was discovered prior to the construction of the first tower, the most important testimony of which are three steps dug into the rock. This level seems to be sealed by a stratum where there was medieval pottery fired in an oxidizing atmosphere and also common Roman pottery and pottery from the Iberian period.
On top of these stairs, which went towards the interior of where the tower is located (from south to north), this trapezoidal tower was built, probably at a time before the year 1000. This pre-Romanesque tower, made with a kind of opus spicatum, the door that allowed access to the interior of the middle enclosure was discovered; It is assumed that there was another door that allowed entry into the tower from outside.
A few centuries later, around the 12th or 13th century, there was a reinforcement of this tower on the outside, where the pre-Romanesque wall was covered with a wall made of medium-sized ashlars. From this stage there must also be a slope and a slab pavement found on the outside of this construction.
Most of the strata that were discovered correspond to levels of demolition from a later period, where there are numerous tiles and quite a few fragments of blue ceramics, some from the medieval period, but especially from the 17th or 18th centuries, when it had to be abandoned. this building.
In 1995, urgent restoration works were carried out on the wall in the southern sector that faces the Cantillepa cliff, carried out by the Association of Friends of the Castle, the Gélida City Council and the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
As a result of these works, the following year a new excavation campaign was carried out in the castle at that location. The work was carried out by the Códice company. The excavation made it possible to confirm that the urbanization of this sector took place in the 14th century.
The church of Sant Pere is located at the western end of the Gélida castle, on the same rocky spur where the castle sits, at the top of the town. The church of Sant Pere remains closed and a visit must be arranged at the Association of Friends of Gélida Castle.
The place or terminus of the castle of Gélida is mentioned for the first time in the year 945, but the church does not appear documented until 988, when in an exchange made by Énnyec Bonfill de Cervelló, great-grandson of Guifré el Pelo's, with Abbot Odó of Sant Cugat, among other things, the church of Gélida is mentioned, although it is not said to be dedicated to San Pedro.
In the undated will of Umbert de Cervelló, lord of Gélida and bishop of Barcelona (1069-85), he bequeathed to his nephew Guerau Alemany I de Cervelló the castle of Gélida and the basilica of Sant Pere, here it is named, for the first time, from San Pedro which was located within the walled area of the castle, with all the tithes and the first fruits. Likewise, he named his wife, Dalmizana, half usufructuary as long as she lived. We know of several remains in this church during the 12th century.
In 1134 Bartolomeu, a priest, left various objects from the cellar and two earthen terraces in the church of San Pedro de Gélida. In 1142 the church was administered by a parish priest named Bartomeu, introduced by Canon Hug of Barcelona. In 1199 it was Pere Arnau, who years later, in 1234, signed as a clergyman of the churches of Sant Pere, Sant Miquel and Santa Maria de Gélida.
It is very possible that the lords of Gélida ended up having the right to patronize the parish priests. This is stated in the documentation from the 13th century. At the end of this century, the parish priest of San Pedro was Berenguer de Cartanyà, who governed the church between 1288 and 1302.
The primitive Romanesque building underwent various renovations. In 1595 two side chapels were built on the south wall, later dedicated to Saint Roque, co-patron of Gélida, and to Saint Christ. In 1644 the polygonal apse was built. In 1680 a heart was built at the foot of the church, of which an arch is still preserved.
The renovation of the roof was carried out in 1698 and produced an increase of half a meter in the building. The sacristy is from the year 1685 and the chamber above it from the year 1705.
Finally, in 1796 the bell tower was built, using the stone from the castle, according to documentation from the time. The church of Sant Pere ceased to be a parish of Gélida in 1871, when it was moved to the new building in the center of the town. It served the cult, occasionally, until 1936. During the civil war it was partly destroyed, burned and looted. In the following years, total abandonment damaged it even more.
Since the founding of the Friends of Gélida Castle in 1965, various restorations, refurbishments and enrichments with pieces of art have been carried out for donations or recoveries. Currently, the cult has been recovered and cultural events are held.
It is a profoundly transformed building, especially in the eastern part, in which the old header was completely replaced. Thanks to the important rehabilitation work carried out by the Friends of Gélida Castle, the vestiges have been recovered that allow us to establish a reading of the complex construction process.
The original structure corresponds to a building with a single nave, of which we do not know the characteristics of its head. It has single-flow windows on the south and north facades, and a twin window on the west facade with horseshoe arches and a clumsy central column, in accordance with the typological and formal model that we find in the church of San Miguel de Olèrdola.
It was probably covered with a beam structure. This primitive building was modified, between the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th century, with the construction of a barrel vault, with a semicircular profile, reinforced by three main arches and supported by two former arches added to the perimeter walls.
This is the same construction process that also occurs, perhaps later, in the same church of Sant Miquel de Olèrdola. In this process it is also necessary to place the door, in a semicircular arch, with the voussoirs supported by a course of plain slabs, which opens on the north façade, a situation that is justified by the location of the church with the south façade located following the cliff.
We do not know if this construction process affected the head of the original building, given that the entire eastern sector of the temple was modified between the 16th and 18th centuries, when the current polygonal apse and the side chapels, covered with ribbed vaults, were built. of gothic tradition.
This process culminated with the construction of the bell tower, a prismatic tower added to the east façade of the apse. The walls of the initial work present an irregular apparatus, with important plastered sectors, which we must consider to be the original finish.
The reforms at the end of the 11th century present a well-squared ashlar apparatus, arranged regularly, in accordance with the construction forms typical of its historical moment.
Entering the walled enclosure, through the portal of the castle's recess, on the right hand side, in the old cemetery of the church, we find the remains of an anthropomorphic tomb excavated in the rock and the vestige of two others that are at different levels. both sides of the main or more entire one.
In 1875 there was news of the existence of anthropomorphic tombs, which, during some work carried out in the old cemetery, were found partially excavated in the rock. We know they were covered. During excavations in 1971 they were rediscovered.
In the main tomb, a headless, larger than normal skeleton and remains of gray ceramics were found. The tomb is made, in part, on the rock and the head, which is added, with carved stone. The head is oriented west. It has a length of 190 cm by about 30 to 40 cm wide.
