Castillo de Santa Cruz

The Castle of Santa Cruz (Galician: Castelo de Santa Cruz) is a castle on an island of the same name in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain. It is located in the town of Porto de Santa Cruz, municipality of Oleiros. The fortress was built in the sixteenth century by General Diego Dasmariñas to improve the defensive system of the bay of A Coruña.

Construction began in either 1594 or 1595 when Diego das Mariñas was capitán general of Galicia, following the plans of military engineer Pedro Rodríguez Muñiz. It was completed with new bulwarks, parapets and pavilions in the 18th century, when Martín Cermeño was capitán general.

After losing its strategic value, the castle was abandoned. It was acquired by José Quiroga Pérez de Deza, husband of the author Emilia Pardo Bazán, to serve as their summer residence. In 1939, their daughter Blanca Quiroga donated it to the army to be used as a summer camp for children orphaned in the Spanish Civil War. The castle served this purpose until 1978.

In 1989, the city council of Oleiros acquired the castle for the purpose of environmental education. In 2001, the CEIDA - Centro de Extensión Universitaria y Divulgación Ambiental de Galicia was established in this place through the collaborative efforts of the Xunta de Galicia, the University of A Coruña, and the city council of Oleiros.

Text adapted from “Castle of Santa Cruz” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castillo de Santa Cruz ranks #4,125 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #173 of the 603 mapped in Spain. Founded 1594, it is older than 34% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 755 atlas entries founded in the 16th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 1,072 times in the last 60 days, more than 50% of the atlas. 5 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Spain compares in the castle statistics.

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