TORO
To the west of Valladolid, on the river Duero, Toro, the second of the two great fortress cities, uplifts its Alcázar to the blue sky; like Zamora, it owed its fame to its strategic position: first, as one of the Christian outposts to the north of the Duero against the Arab possessions to the south, and, secondly, as a link between Valladolid and Zamora, the latter being the bulwark of Christian opposition against the ever encroaching Portuguese.
Twin cities the fortresses have been called, and no better expression is at hand to denote at once the similarity of their history, their necessary origin, and their necessary decadence.
Nevertheless, Toro appears in history somewhat later than Zamora, having been erected either on virgin soil, or upon the ruins of a destroyed Arab fortress as late as[{245}] in the tenth century, by Garcia, son of Alfonso III. At any rate, it was not until a century later, in 1065, that the city attained any importance, when Fernando I. bequeathed it to his daughter Elvira, who, seeing her elder brother's impetuous ambitions, handed over the town and the citadel to him.
Throughout the middle ages the name of Toro is foremost among the important fortresses of Castile, and many an event—generally tragic and bloody—took place behind its walls. Here Alfonso XI. murdered his uncle in cold blood, and Don Pedro el Cruel, after besieging the town and the citadel held in opposition to him by his mother, allowed her a free exit with the gentlemen defenders of the place, but broke his word when they were on the bridge, and murdered all excepting his widowed mother!
In the days of Isabel the Catholic, Toro was taken by the kings of Portugal, who upheld the claims of Enrique IV's illegitimate daughter, Juana la Beltranaja. In the vicinity of the town, the great battle of Pelea Gonzalo was fought, which gave the western part of Castile to the rightful[{246}] sovereigns. This battle is famous for the many prelates and curates who, armed,—and wearing trousers and not frocks!—fought like Christians (!) in the ranks.
In Toro, Cortes was assembled in 1505 to open Queen Isabel's testament, and to promulgate those laws which have gone down in Spanish history as the Leyes de Toro; this was the last spark of Toro's fame, for since then its fate has been identical with that of Zamora, forty miles away.
Strictly speaking, it is doubtful if Toro ever was a city; at one time it seems to have possessed an ephemeral bishop,—at least such is the popular belief,—who must have reigned in his see but a short time, as at an early date the city was submitted to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Astorga. Later, when the see was reëstablished in Zamora, the latter's twin sister, Toro, was definitely included in the new episcopal diocese.
Be that as it may, the Catholic kings raised the church at Toro to a collegiate in the sixteenth century (1500?) because they were anxious to gain the good-will of the inhabitants after the Portuguese invasion.
Built either toward the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century,[{247}] Santa Maria la Mayor, popularly called la catedral, closely resembles the cathedral church at Zamora. The style is the same (Byzantine-Romanesque), and the impression of strength and solidity produced by the warlike aspect of the building is even more pronounced than in the case of the sister church.