The town hall and the castle tower today form a unitary block, attached to the church perpendicularly, closing the square on one of its flanks. Both the tower and the dungeons of the old Templar castle serve as the Town Hall.
On the façade facing the square, the two mullioned windows corresponding to the meeting room on the main floor stand out. Its mullions are slender columns with Corinthian capitals topped by a piece with rosettes. Underneath the hall, there is a market with three pointed arches. From there, through a narrow door, one enters the prison, which is a small room covered with a barrel vault and whose floor has a square opening that communicates with the dungeon. The meeting room retains its original wooden ceiling.
The tower, known as the tower of the Nublos or the Esconjurador, could have been built by the Templars or by the Sanjuanistas, since its construction period some indicate that it could have been in the thirteenth century and others in the fifteenth century. It is currently incorporated into the sixteenth century building of the town hall, standing out from it both in plan and in elevation.
It has a square floor plan of about five meters on each side and its masonry work is reinforced by ashlars at the corners. In its walls there are few openings and it preserves the crenellated top, although this could be a later addition, as below it are the corbels that would support the continuous machicolation.
The whole complex, tower and building, was restored in the late twentieth century.
It is also known as “del esconjurador” because probably, when there was a threat of storm, plague or plague, the priest would climb the tower with some relic to “conjure” the evil with prayers and exorcisms so that it would pass from the locality.
More information: Maestrazgo Virtual Museum