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Both the castle and the church of Calatrava la Nueva were erected in the same place where the castle of Dueñas was built. It is very close to another castle, Salvatierra, which is also located on top of a hill and can be seen in the foreground in the last scene of the video.
This whole area is a strategic place to control the passage from Castile to Andalusia, and specifically, one of its main communication routes, the route to Toledo.
The monumental complex consists of three walled enclosures, which house a castle, the church, the convent, the hostel, and various units for the cemetery, the stables, the vegetable garden and the craftsmen's workshops. All this occupies a perimeter of about 46,000 square meters. The construction of the sacred convent and castle of Calatrava la Nueva was one of the consequences of the victory in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), when the Christians won all the territory between the Tagus and Sierra Morena.
The enclosure began to be built in the year 1213, although the church and the convent are a little later. Once finished, the headquarters of the Order moved from Calatrava la Vieja (Carrión de Calatrava, Ciudad Real), which is further north.
In the fourteenth century the whole little by little was losing the defensive nature and control of the territory for which he had been born, so the Calatravian friars occupied the entire site, keeping the whole with an exclusively religious function until the year 1802.
