La Mota fortress, also known as Alcalá la Real castle, is a defensive enclosure, located on the Cerro de la Mota, dating from the Nasrid period (13th and 14th centuries), although with some previous elements.

According to some authors, the watchtower-castle was erected at the beginning of the 8th century, by the Granada-born president Badis Aben Habuz, as a defense against the raids of the Baeza hosts, which were based in the nearby castle of Locubín. But this happened, in reality, in the s. XI, at the time of the first taifa, in which the Ziri Berber kingdom of Granada was born and died. It is known that before, in 889, it was the center of one of the Muladi rebellions against the Caliphate of Córdoba and that, later, it had a prominent role in the confrontations between the Almoravids and the Taifa kings, a time when their systems were reinforced. defensive and the entire inhabited space is surrounded with a new wall, raising a mosque and a complex access system to the upper part of the hill, with several gates controlled by towers.

In the Almohad period it suffered the attacks of the North African Berbers for its manifest rebellion and its constitution as an independent manor. Abd al-Málik ben Sa`id, its governor and head of the family clan, paid for his rebellion with jail in Morocco for a short time, later returning free and obedient to Alcalá. After the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), the castle is subject to various attacks that, according to some authors, led to its passing into Christian and Muslim hands alternately. In this fortress the so-called Pact of Alcalá took place, between Alfonso X and Alhamar (1265), a time when it was under Granada's control.

Between the mid-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a defensive watchtower system was organized that controlled the border line established in the Pact of Jaén.

In 1340, Alfonso XI besieged the city, which capitulated, defeated by famine, in 1341, finally becoming one of the main border posts of the Kingdom of Castile against the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. Until the fall of Granada, the castle of La Mota had generous endowments from Castile, carrying out some works, such as the raising of the so-called "New Tower". However, once Granada was conquered, the fortress was gradually abandoned and the entire defensive system "gradually fell into the state of neglect it would reach in the 18th century, coinciding with the depopulation of the citadel on the outskirts of the plain."

Already in the 19th century, the French forces conditioned and restored the fortress, building a wall that went from the fortress to the prison tower, surrounding the area of occupation, which included the Abbey Major Church. In 1812, at the end of the War of Independence, the Main Church, used as a warehouse, was set on fire, which caused the collapse of part of the vault, and caused the explosion of the powder magazine that housed the Jail tower, destroying a large part of its walls.