Castrillo de Mota de Judios

Castrillo de Mota de Judíos is a small municipality in the province of Burgos, Castilla y León, situated near Castrojeriz on the Camino Frances. The village’s name has a singular historical significance: it was known as Castrillo Matajudíos, meaning kill Jews, until 2015, when residents voted to restore the original medieval name which referenced the Jewish quarter that existed here.

The renaming was widely covered internationally as an example of Spain’s ongoing reckoning with its medieval history of Jewish expulsion and the Inquisition. The original name Mota de Judíos referred to a mound or elevated settlement where the Jewish community of medieval Castrojeriz lived.

The village itself is a modest farming community on the Meseta plain, but its toponymic history gives it a significance entirely out of proportion to its physical scale.