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The night of July 6, 1570, a troop of 600 men led by El Yebali and Lorenzo Alfaqui began the march disguised as Castilians with the intention of assaulting this town, with only eighty residents. They began the assault in squads of eight ranks with six horses on their flanks, giving the impression that they had come to perform some service to the King.
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There were only seven men left in the town in a position to defend themselves. Women, disguised as men to deceive the assailants they took up arms, they went up to the bell tower to ring the bell and to the castle to defend it. The fortification suffered three assaults and three were repelled.
The attempt cost the Moors seventeen dead and sixty wounded. María Sagredo, seeing her father wounded, made her way through the horde, climbed to the top of a tower that she bravely defended and killed a Moor and wounded others with arrows, lying them at the foot of the tower she was defending. The Moriscos, seeing the resistance and tenacity of those people willing to die rather than surrender, decided to retreat, burning thirty houses, arresting four girls and stealing 3,000 head of cattle.
Luis del Mármol Carvajal thus narrated at the end of the 16th century the story of María Sagredo, a unique heroine who defended Alozaina from an attempted assault during the Moorish rebellion, in 1570, when there were only women, children and the elderly in the town.
“Here it occurs to me as a good example to say the courage of a maiden named María Sagredo, who, seeing Martín Domínguez, her father, fallen from a shotgun blow that a Moor had given him, came to him and took a cape that he was wearing, and He put a helmet on his head, and with the crossbow in his hands and the quiver at his side he climbed the wall, and fighting as a brave man could, he defended a gate, and killed a Moor, and wounded many others with an arrow. and he did so much that day, that he deserved that those of his majesty's council gave him the favor of some Moorish estates in Tolox for his wedding.”.
But the legend goes further and claims that this brave woman noticed some beehives, which she immediately threw away. The swarms furiously attacked the besiegers of the town who had to retreat shouting “damn the flies of your land”.
The tower that you see is the main remains of the old castle; It protrudes from the walls of the enclosure and is integrated into the housing complex in the area. Trunk-conical in shape, it is made up of large stone blocks carved on the outside.
Visiting hours: all year round
