30/08/2026
THE DARK HISTORY OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS IN VALENCIA
Walk through Plaça del Mercat today and it's difficult to imagine it as anything other than one of the liveliest parts of Valencia. The Central Market is packed with shoppers and tourists, people sit outside with coffee and bocadillos, and directly opposite stands La Lonja. But for centuries this was also one of the darkest places in the city.
From the late Middle Ages, Plaça del Mercat was Valencia's principal site for public ex*****ons. The location wasn't chosen by accident. This was one of the busiest places in the city, and ex*****ons were supposed to be seen. They were punishment, warning and, uncomfortable as it is to imagine today, public spectacle. Research into Valencia's records has identified an astonishing 737 ex*****ons between 1450 and 1500 alone.
The gallows stood in the market square and crowds gathered to watch condemned prisoners being hanged. Other punishments included beheading, burning and, later, the garrote. Executions weren't confined to the market either. Noblemen could be executed close to the Cathedral, while people convicted of heresy were sometimes burned near the old course of the Turia.
Perhaps the most famous ex*****on in Plaça del Mercat came much later. Cayetano Ripoll, a schoolteacher from Russafa, was accused of heresy after being denounced for his religious beliefs and teaching practices. On 31 July 1826 he was hanged in the square. He is generally regarded as the last person in Spain executed for heresy following proceedings by the country's final surviving Inquisition-style tribunal.
But public ex*****ons in Valencia didn't end there. They continued well into the nineteenth century, increasingly using the garrote vil, a particularly grim device in which an iron collar and screw mechanism was used to kill the condemned prisoner.
Finally, on 29 October 1896, Valencia witnessed its last public ex*****on. After centuries in which death sentences had been deliberately carried out in front of crowds, ex*****ons disappeared behind prison walls. Capital punishment itself would survive in Spain for much longer.
It's an extraordinary contrast. The next time you're walking between the Central Market and La Lonja, stop for a moment and look around Plaça del Mercat. For generations of Valencians, this wasn't simply somewhere to buy food or meet friends. It was also somewhere thousands of people gathered to watch another human being die.
Sometimes the most beautiful corners of Valencia have the darkest stories.
Did you know public ex*****ons once took place right in the heart of Valencia's Old Town?
