Five centuries shaping the Ravelin

From the V Centenary to the V Centenary… In 2021, five centuries of the siege of Logroño, popularly known as a site, were completed. Of the granting of the fleurs-de-lis, precisely for such resistance, in 2023. And this 2024 marks the completion of the construction of the complex that we know today as Revellín, with the Cube as the main attraction – leaving the Gate attached -, as part of the modernization of the city’s defensive system as a result of events that the capital of La Rioja, like every June 11, is preparing to commemorate.

Everything related to that “war action”, as defined by the doctor in History and professor of Didactics of Social Sciences at the University of La Rioja, Diego Téllez, is turning 500 years old in this second decade of the 2000s and this It is the turn of the well-known Revellín Cube, an anniversary that has become one of the most recognizable and recognized identity symbols of the city of Logroño, far from the defensive function for which it was designed in the 16th century as time went by.

The City Council, to celebrate it, has organized throughout the month of May ‘Logroño in time: conferences from the Revellín’, a cycle to mark the V Centenary of the completion of the construction of the wall, at least the small part that is preserved, it does not go unnoticed. Thus, speakers such as Marcelino Izquierdo, Federico Soldevilla, Emilio Sáenz-Francés and Isabel Murillo have been revealing to the public every detail of a story worth telling.

We are talking about the Cubo del Revellín, one of the most emblematic points of the capital and, therefore, of tourist interest; Fortification yesterday, almost a monument today, it occupies a prominent place in the collective imagination of the city every time Saint Barnabas approaches and someone refers to 1521 – as is the case – and, to begin with, we must continue to insist that said ‘bastion’ did not exist at that time.

“It was, in reality, a consequence of that, which allowed what was then known as the ‘key to Castile’ to be postulated as a stronghold if the Kingdom of Navarra was to be preserved,” writes Téllez, who adds that “Charles V accepted the argument in the first instance and helped finance the beginning of the remodeling of the entire Logroño defensive system.

The professor and researcher gives an account of all this in the communication ‘El Cubo del Revellín de Logroño (1522-1524): an example of an artillery cube of the transitional fortification’ at the V Hispano-American Congress of ‘History of Construction’ held in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) last year, where he details the vicissitudes of the ‘New Cube’ of the 16th century fortified area of ​​Logroño, designed and built after the siege to which the Franco-Navarre troops of Asparrot unsuccessfully subjected the city.

Charles V visited Logroño in 1523 to grant him various privileges – and support the expansion and reform of fortifications, as throughout the Northern border – in reward for his resistance to the siege that occurred two years ago “between June 5 and 11.” And the ‘victory’ revealed the strategic importance of the city, bordering the Kingdom of Navarra; as well as the weakness of the defenses.

The construction of the Cube itself cost 1.8 million maravedíes. Almost everything about the details of the work is known thanks to an “exceptional” documentary source: the account of expenses for the wall between 1498 and 1540, a document preserved in the General Archive of Simancas, which reflects an investment of 7.4 million of maravedíes, of which up to 5.4 came from royal concessions, and mentions everything from the Laguardia lime to the Castilseco stone used, in addition to the charges from stonemasons, workers and girls.

And if the master builder seems clear that it was Lope de Isturizaga, regarding the author of the layout there are more doubts: Diego de Vera or Micer Benedetto de Rávenna. The truth is that just 10 years after the completion of the works, whose fringes lasted until 1525, the Cube was considered “an obsolete work, completely inadequate and in need of regrowth and profound reform.” Although what happened from there… would be part of another story.