Tower of Ponce de Leon - Jerez de la Frontera - Andalusia

Of the twelve towers that the Alcásser had (12th century) , only seven remain. One of them is the Torre del Homenaje or Ponce de León.

The Ponce de León family has lived in Jerez and in the old palace of Ponce de León Dávila since the 15th century . The tower of the Alcásser de Ponce de León was built around 1471 by Don Rodrigo Ponce de León y Cabrera, mayor of the Alcásser and corregidor of the city from 1472 to 1478 .

It was bad in the 16th and 17th centuries Alcazar a state of desolation and desolation. The preservation and maintenance and repair of the walls and towers no longer played a role for a fortification that was then considered obsolete . This decline will reach its peak at the end of the 17th century, when Alcásser enters a new phase of splendor and splendour. By royal decree of Felipe IV, the ownership of the Alcázar was inherited by Don Lorenzo Fernández de Villavicencio, one of the most powerful and influential lines in Jerez, who carried out a series of important reforms.

The descendants of Lorenzo Fernández de Villavicencio lived in the Alcázar until 1926. Then the Alcázar was sold to the winemaker Salvador Díez y Pérez de Muñoz for 176,000 pesetas . His intention was to turn it into a hotel , so the entire interior of the Torre de Ponce de León was demolished to make rooms. It is believed that the ceilings of the original tower were much higher. The Alcázar de Jerez was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument by the Provisional Government of the Republic in 1931. After Salvador Díez's death, the estate passed to his heirs, who kept it until the late 1960s.

Willem Vandenameele