It is the only thing left of the Romanesque church of San Esteban, founded in 1086 to commemorate the Castilian victory over Almoravid Ali. The tower is Gothic, from the 13th century and the clock was placed in it in the 19th century. Declared an Asset of Cultural Interest since 1981.

The Clock Tower enjoys a perpetual link with Peñafiel, and is that it is the oldest preserved building in the town.
Due to its peculiar characteristics, this building had a double function: that of defensive use and that of housing the bells that called the faithful of the neighborhood of San Esteban, one of the first neighborhoods of Peñafiel.
The Church of San Esteban was one of the first religious precincts of Peñafiel and one of the most important churches of the region until the XV and XVI centuries. However, those times of splendor ended and the temple was left in the deepest abandonment since the mid-seventeenth century, when it was dismantled. Of its historical-artistic legacy there are only samples in some stone walls that are fixed to the tower, several buttresses, various remains appeared in works made, as well as a Romanesque stone virgin that is currently exhibited in the Regional Museum of Sacred Art of Peñafiel.
As the tower is the only vestige of the Church of San Esteban, the watchtower changed ownership and passed into municipal hands, although different religious symbols were preserved, such as the iron cross that crowns it.
The name of this building as Clock Tower is relatively young, and it was in the nineteenth century when the Council of Peñafiel installed a clock on top of this part of the tower, and from that moment it was renamed Torre del Reloj.