Alcazar is a Spanish castle, from an Arabic word (al-kasr) meaning 'fortress.' Many of the cities of Spain have an Alcazar.
Alcazar de San Juan or simply Alcazar is a town in the province of Ciudad Real, in the plain of La Mancha named for its Moorish fortress, which was afterwards garrisoned by the knights of St John. Much of the action of Cervantes' Don Quixote takes place in the neighborhood of Alcazar. The village of El Toboso was the home of the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso; Argamasilla de Alba is declared by tradition to be the birthplace of the original of Don Quixote himself.
In the Alcazar of Segovia, Queen Isabella married King Ferdinand. Built in the eleventh century and rebuilt in the early fifteenth, its Moorish influence is confined to some interior details. A fire in 1862 destroyed most of the structure, which was rebuilt about two decades later in a more romantic style than the original building, giving it the 'too-good-to-be-true' castle appearance of a Spanish Neuschwanstein.
In Toledo, during the Spanish Civil War, the Alcazar of Toledo was held by the Nationalist Coronel Moscardo against the Republican forces. Republican forces kidnapped Moscardo's son. They said Moscardo could either turn over Alcazar or his son would die. Moscardo did not surrender and his son was murdered in July of 1936.
The Alcazar of Seville was built in the 1360s by Moorish craftsmen for Pedro the Cruel who, with his mistress, Maria de Padilla, lived in and ruled from the Alcazar, and often remodeled. A UNESCO World Heritage site.
