Numancia

Every culture seems to need it's own Alamo. Do those histories justify the costs of wars? Do war heroes glorify the heroes? Or war itself?

Here near Soria lies the site of the Spanish Alamo, Masada - or choose your disaster of choice. The original Iberians - there were different kinds, Celts, Basques, maybe others - were conquered by the Romans (the Basques less so, but that's a different history).

The Celtic tribes near Soria put up an especially strong resistance. The Romans themselves thought so. Or, at least having invested so much in running over these people they later thought it necessary to justify the cost by claiming such strong resistance. But the resistance was probably as strong as they claimed. By all accounts before the end of the siege the Celts were digging up their dead.

Numancia lies on top of a "teso", a hill or mount with a flat top. The flat top here measures about 8 hectares. That was the city or town; medium/big for it's time. It was walled and fortified. The wide, fertile Duero river valley below was cultivated to feed the city. Before the days of artillery (catapults, or siege engines) such defenses were impregnable - almost. The routine maneuver to defeat such a city was to surround (invest) it with your own forts and wall those together creating your own defensive ring around the city's defenses and not let anybody either in or out. That's exactly what the Romans did. It may have taken years to bring these people to their knees. But eventually it fell and was burned. Either by the Romans, or by the Celts themselves (anticipating David Koresh).

Nobody knows for sure, but the records of the struggle are legendary and the layer of ash is definitive. Above that lie Roman ruins and higher still the monuments erected after the Carlist wars. One of for which no better place could be found than directly atop a Roman bath.

More info. from my favorite source, Wikipedia

and this video on YouTube: