Urrea de Gaén is a municipality located in the

province of Teruel Teruel ( Catalan: ''Terol'' ) is a province of Aragon, in the northeast of Spain. The capital is Teruel. It is bordered by the provinces of Tarragona, Castellón, Valencia (including its exclave Rincón de Ademuz), Cuenca, Guadalajara, and Z ...

, community of

Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and ; ) is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces of Spain, ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. According to the 2004

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

( INE), the municipality has a population of 568 inhabitants. Located in the Lower Martin river area, in the Ebro basin, at the left bank of the Martin river, at 308 meters of elevation. It lies 160 km away from

Teruel Teruel () is a city in Aragon, located in eastern Spain, and is also the capital of Teruel (province), Teruel Province. It had a population of 35,900 as of 2022, making it the least populated provincial capital in Spain. It is noted for its har ...

, the province capital, and 75 km away from

Zaragoza Zaragoza (), traditionally known in English as Saragossa ( ), is the capital city of the province of Zaragoza and of the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributaries, the ...

, capital of the community.

History

Urrea de Gaén has known human settlement at least since the

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

period (2100 BC), as evidenced by ruins and remains discovered in numerous excavations. It was inhabited by tribes of

Iberian Iberian refers to Iberia. Most commonly Iberian refers to: *Someone or something originating in the Iberian Peninsula, namely from Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra. The term ''Iberian'' is also used to refer to anything pertaining to the fo ...

. Later there was the Roman occupation with a wide network of agricultural settlements (fundus) in the form of villas. A long Muslim occupation and residence (from the eighth century to 1610) left its mark in the local architecture in the Moorish styling of the village. The area was occupied by the Aragonese from the twelfth century, at the time of Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronila, becoming part of the Aragon defensive system. After multiple marriages, lawsuits and swaps, in 1268 King James I created the Lordship of

Híjar Híjar is a municipality located in the Teruel (province), province of Teruel, Aragon, Spain. In 2023 the municipality had a population of 1,797 inhabitants. The town is noted for the well-preserved, 15th century Híjar Synagogue, Synagogue, an ...

for his natural son Pedro Fernandez de Hijar. Thereafter the town was always under the ''dominicatura'' of Híjar's house, until the abolition of the old regime, well into the nineteenth century.

Monuments

The village is rich in architecture, history and art. Some of the more notable structures are: * Iglesia de San Pedro Martir from the eighteenth century. Built in the baroque-style neoclassic of stone and brick. By the architect Agustín Sanz in 1782. It had a Bayeu Ramon altarpiece, a painting of St. Augustine of Jose Castillo, and another painting by

Francisco de Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, a ...

, "Apparitions of the Virgin to Santiago", all missing today. The main altarpiece is the work of painter Alejandro Cañada, and there is a reproduction of Goya's painting on the altar of the Virgen del Pilar. * The Town Hall Facade of the same period, in civil baroque style, built with brick. The bottom four arches, two of them below street level give way to the old Moorish and Jewish quarter (La Muela) and the New District.

References

Municipalities in the Province of Teruel {{Teruel-geo-stub

History

Monuments

See also

References