Inverted pendulums are very suitable to illustrate many ideas in automatic control of nonlinear systems. The rotational inverted pendulum is a novel design that has some interesting dynamics features that are not present in inverted pendulums with linear motion of the pivot. In this paper the dynamics of a rotational inverted pendulum has been studied applying well-known results of bifurcation theory. Two classes of local bifurcations are analyzed by means of the center manifold theorem and the normal form theory — first, a pitchfork bifurcation that appears for the open-loop controlled system; second, a Hopf bifurcation, and its possible degeneracies, of the equilibrium point at the upright pendulum position, that is present for the controlled closed-loop system. Some numerical results are also presented in order to verify the validity of our analysis.