Bellver Castle

Bellver Castle""' [ [http://www.castlexplorer.org/european-medieval-castles/bellver-castle-spain/ Bellver Castle, Spain] ] ( _ca. Castell de Bellver) is a circular castle on a hill near Palma de Mallorca on the Island of Majorca, Balearic Islands. It was built in the 14th century for King James II of Aragon. It was used as a military prison during the 18th and 19th centuries. Now it is one of the main tourist attractions of the island.

It was used as a prison in the 1950s, a period where many people where still being prosecuted for their loyalty and commitment to the Republic during the Spanish Civil War 1936-39. After the Civil War, the insurgents, being victorious in part through the aid of National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy, and also the reluctance to come to the aid of the democratic Spanish Republic by such major European powers as Great Britain and France, the leader of the Nationalist-Falangist rebellion, Franco, established a dictatorship that would last until his death in November 1975.

Some estimates put the total number of executed prisoners in Spain in the first decade of the dictatorship as high as 60,000, some of whom may have spent time incarcerated in Castell de Bellver.

The intellectual and writer Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos was one of the most famous prisoners of the castle.

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