The Dragon of Albarracín
📍 Albarracín, Teruel
In the autumn of the year 1147, when Alfonso VII of León and Castile still dreamed of reconquering Al-Andalus and the Kingdom of Aragón stretched its ambitious fingers toward the Mediterranean, a young knight named Rodrigo de Azagra rode through the Sierra de Albarracín under a sky the color of old iron. The wind carried the scent of pine resin and distant rain, and somewhere in the limestone cliffs above, a golden eagle screamed its territorial challenge. Rodrigo had been tasked by his liege, King Alfonso the Battler's successor, to survey these wild borderlands—territories contested between Christian kingdoms and Moorish taifas, where the line between civilization and wilderness blurred like morning mist. The town of Albarracín itself, perched impossibly on its pink sandstone outcrop, s…