The collapse has said more about the state of Mudejar brickwork than any glossy tourism campaign or heritage slogan. The church, also known as Our Lady of the Castle, is one of the most valuable Romanesque-Mudejar temples in Valladolid province and has been declared an Asset of Cultural Interest. Gonzalo Santonja, Minister of Culture, Tourism and Sports for Castilla y León, travelled to the site immediately.
Both the regional government and the Archdiocese of Valladolid described the event as a “catastrophe”. No injuries were reported. No world-famous monument was lost. Yet the images of red brick and stone lying in a heap captured a wider unease about how Spain treats one of its most distinctive architectural legacies.
Across much of the peninsula, the modest Mudejar churches that still stand in quiet villages receive far less attention than the grand cathedrals and palaces that attract international visitors. Their slow decay rarely makes headlines until a wall or apse gives way.
A Style Built From Mixture
Mudejar architecture grew from coexistence.
From the twelfth century onwards, Muslim craftsmen working under Christian rule combined brick, plaster, carved wood and glazed tile into towers, apses and ceilings that still stand in many Iberian towns. The name derives from mudéjan, Arabic for “domesticated” or “permitted to remain”.
Pointed arches, patterned brickwork and delicate painted motifs turned relatively simple buildings into complex surfaces. The style reached a recognised peak in Aragon and Castile, but echoes of it stretch from Lisbon to Zaragoza. The Church of San Tirso in Sahagún, built in the 12th century almost entirely of brick, demonstrates the fusion of Islamic horseshoe arches with Christian naves.
UNESCO recognised the value of this fusion early on. The Mudejar architecture of Teruel entered the World Heritage List in 1986, with later extensions covering a wider group of towers and churches in Aragon. Santa María Cathedral in Teruel features a 13th-century tower and a coffered ceiling called “the Sistine Chapel of Mudejar art” for its meticulous paintings.
International attention, however, has settled mostly on the best known ensembles. Smaller sites that never appear on postcards still depend on local budgets and volunteers who sweep, patch and fundraise as best they can.
Too Many Buildings, Not Enough Care
Spain holds an enormous stock of old structures.
One national inventory counted around 20,000 defensive fortifications, with roughly half of them officially listed and studied. The same imbalance appears with churches and chapels. A handful receive steady funding and professional maintenance. Thousands of others survive on irregular grants and whatever rural councils can spare after paying for roads, schools and health centres.
In Muriel de Zapardiel, the collapsed church was built between the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Its architecture, mostly made of brick, reflects the synthesis between Christian tradition and Islamic-rooted construction techniques typical of Castilian Mudejar. The temple features three naves separated by pillars and arches, and preserves in the central nave a notable wooden Mudejar coffered ceiling.
In many municipalities, the congregation has shrunk to a few elderly residents. They can no longer organise regular repairs, yet their buildings still need specialist work rather than improvised fixes. Mudejar brick and plaster demand skills that fewer craftspeople now possess.
The result is familiar: small cracks appear, tiles loosen, water infiltrates. A harsh winter or heavy rain then finishes what years of minor neglect began. By the time structural damage is visible from the road, repairs cost far more than early preventative work would have done.
Rural Silence and Vanishing Landmarks
The problem is not only technical.
Large parts of inland Spain are emptying out. One demographic study estimated that the country holds more than 3,000 abandoned villages and over 5,000 at high risk of depopulation, whilst 90 per cent of residents live on 30 per cent of the land.
In that context, the loss of a small Mudejar apse might seem minor. Yet for people who grew up nearby, such churches are often the last visible links to a shared past. The school has closed, the bar opens twice a week, the post office comes by van; the church tower still marks the horizon.
Once that tower leans or the apse crumbles, the village loses more than a place of worship. It loses a point of orientation and a reason for anyone to visit outside the summer holidays. For younger Spaniards who moved to cities, returning to see scaffolding around a familiar building can feel unsettling, but at least suggests hope.
Returning to see rubble often feels final. There is rarely money or political will to rebuild a half-forgotten chapel in a town with 50 inhabitants.
Prestige Projects and Everyday Ruins
Spain has invested serious funds in headline cultural projects, from major museum expansions to high-profile restorations in Madrid, Seville or Valencia. That spending matters, but it exists alongside a quieter reality of closed churches and fenced-off cloisters.
The contrast is stark. France’s scramble to rescue Notre-Dame after the 2019 fire showed how quickly resources appear once a famous symbol is in danger. Smaller parish churches across rural France, Italy or Portugal do not receive such mobilisation. In Spain, critics of the current model point out that long application processes favour well-staffed dioceses and wealthy municipalities.
Villages with no heritage officer and a part-time mayor lose out, even if their Mudejar tower is older than many celebrated city monuments. Short-term grants often pay for reports and emergency scaffolding rather than long-term maintenance plans. Contractors patch a roof one year, then return a decade later to find that untreated damp has damaged the brickwork below.
What Real Protection Would Look Like
What would real protection for Mudejar architecture look like beyond the famous towers of Teruel?
It would likely start with something unglamorous: steady, predictable funding for routine inspections and minor repairs in small towns. That means training more bricklayers and plasterers in traditional techniques, then paying them enough to stay in the trade.
It also means simplifying procedures so that mayors in villages facing depopulation can request help without navigating hundreds of pages of forms. Digital documentation can help too, although it should not become an excuse. High-resolution models and laser scans allow researchers and students across the world to study Mudejar vaults and towers even if travel is difficult.
They will never replace the experience of standing in a cool nave, looking up at painted brick that still carries the marks of Muslim, Christian and Jewish craftsmen. The chevet of the Muriel de Zapardiel church housed the original apses, decorated with blind brick arcades, one of the most characteristic features of this style in the region.
The complex includes a detached tower, also made of brick and separate from the main body, which may have originally had defensive or surveillance functions. Inside, the church preserved elements of notable historical and artistic value, such as a 16th-century tabernacle and various liturgical furniture from different periods. All of this now sits cordoned off, awaiting assessment.
After the Collapse
The Monday morning collapse will not make the evening news outside Spain. For architects, historians and local residents, however, it feels like a quiet alarm. One more apse gone, one less example to explain how Iberia once blended influences from north and south of the Mediterranean.
Spain often presents itself as a country proud of its layered past. Living up to that image requires more than festivals and big restoration campaigns. It requires attention to small brick apses on windy hillsides, to timber roofs above almost empty pews and to the people who still care for them without fanfare.
If Mudejar sites are allowed to crumble unnoticed, the loss will not lie only in specialist guidebooks. It will be visible in the empty outlines on rural skylines, where brickwork once told a quiet, intricate story of coexistence, craft and compromise across eight centuries of Iberian history.
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