Village
Monzón is the head town and capital of the comarca of Cinca Medio, in the province of Huesca, with 18,152 inhabitants (INE 2024) and a municipal area of 155 km², which also includes Selgua and Conchel. It sits at the foot of its imposing castle, of Arab origin, among hills with wide views over the city. The Sosa and Cinca rivers run through its territory, the latter being the Ebro's most abundant tributary; over the Sosa stands the Siphon, a viaduct of the Aragón y Cataluña Canal inaugurated in the early 20th century by Alfonso XIII. Occupied since the Neolithic, it was taken by El Cid in 1083. Since the mid-19th century, with the railway, it has lived mainly on industry and irrigated agriculture. It celebrates its main festival in the week of 21 September, for San Mateo.
Monument
Templar fortress of Monzón, in a strategic site that was difficult to conquer, which made it a target of military interest in all the wars fought in the territory from the 10th to the 20th century. Its moment of greatest political relevance came during the domination of the Order of the Temple, and the present castle, in continuous use from the 12th to the 20th century — around a thousand years —, reflects both Templar military architecture and that developed later in the Early Modern period. Among other elements, it preserves the chapel of San Nicolás, the Homage Tower and the Tower of James I, and it is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) with the rank of monument.
Monument
Church of San Juan Bautista of Monzón (Cinca Medio, Huesca), in late Gothic style with modifications throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Built in brick, it has a single nave facing north-west, side chapels and a pentagonal choir. It was founded on its present site, the former Market Square, after the 1414 relocation of the temple of San Juan from the castle hillside, where it had probably been erected after 1308-1309, when the Hospitallers inherited the Templar properties. In 1435 it hosted the Cortes convened by Queen María to deal with the ransom of King Alfonso V, held captive by the Genoese.
Monument
Historic town hall of Monzón (Huesca), a building in Aragonese Renaissance architecture erected between the 16th and 17th centuries that presides over the Plaza Mayor. Its main façade features a portico with five round arches over three storeys, resting on thick, smooth-shafted Tuscan columns on square-plan bases; the side façade adds two further arches. In 1769 the large second-floor windows were replaced by three balconies alongside the arcades, between which a shield bearing the city's coat of arms was placed.
Monument
Environmental interpretation centre of the Cinca River, in Monzón (Huesca), a cultural space dedicated to the river and its sphere of influence, both natural and social. The exhibition provides information on the various aspects of the river's flow, its role in environmental processes and in the life of the riverbanks, and the need to preserve it as a source of life and a driver of biodiversity. The centre organises trails through the Los Sotos municipal park and environmental workshops aimed at groups and schools.
Activity
Festival commemorating the surrender of the Templar castle to Jaime II in 1309, after the disappearance of the Order of the Temple.
Monument
The co-cathedral of Santa María del Romeral, in Monzón (Huesca), is the cathedral seat of the diocese of Barbastro-Monzón together with the cathedral of Barbastro, and it is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection). It was built following the Christian conquest of Monzón in 1089 -with a consecration, probably partial, in 1098- and construction continued until the first half of the 12th century; throughout the Middle Ages it several times hosted the Cortes of the kingdom of Aragon. In the 17th century the Romanesque cloister was lost and the present crypt and bell tower were raised, a Mudejar tower above the crossing; in 1904 the tower was restored and a new clock installed. The temple, with three naves covered by barrel vaults, retains three originally Romanesque apses at its chevet, although one was remade in Gothic style.
Nature
The río Cinca, the Ebro's most abundant tributary, flows through the municipal district of Monzón, capital of the Cinca Medio comarca, where it receives on its left bank the waters of the río Sosa. Along this stretch lie the Sotos de Monzón, an area of great ecological richness with riverside woodlands of willows, black poplars, ash trees and white poplars, with dense undergrowth, where birds are present all year round.
Curiosity
The castle of Monzón (Huesca), of Arab origin dating from the 10th century, whose keep is its oldest structure, was handed over to the Order of the Temple in 1143 as compensation for the order's renunciation of its rights over the Crown of Aragon. Between 1214 and 1217, the Templar master Guillem de Montrodón educated there, under the order's guardianship, the young James I of Aragon during his minority. After the dissolution of the Order of the Temple by Pope Clement V, the commandery of Monzón held out until it was conquered in 1309; the fortress then passed, in 1317, to the Order of Malta. Monzón was also the seat of the Cortes of the Crown of Aragon between the 12th and 17th centuries.
Activity
The main festival of Monzón is celebrated in honour of San Mateo, on 21 September, with peñas, brass bands (charangas), opening speeches (pregones), small fairground stalls, open-air dances (verbenas), concerts, early-morning dances, folklore, a musical revue and a town band; on the Sunday before festival week the Zagalas and Zagaletas are crowned on the plaza Mayor, and on the eve the Float Parade runs through the city's main streets. Since the early 1980s the municipal festival programme has been “free of charge”, with free open-air dances and concerts. Monzón is also the town where Charles V convened the general Cortes of the Crown of Aragon in 1528; while there he received the challenge letter from the French king Francis I, a challenge he accepted although the duel never took place.
Activity
Minor festival of Monzón in honour of Santa Bárbara, celebrated on 4 December, the date on which, in 1643, Spanish troops recovered the castle taken a year and a half earlier by the Franco-Catalans, the origin of this patronage. The day opens with the traditional baptism of the mayor, in which councillors and local representatives throw chestnuts and sweets from the town hall balconies to the crowd gathered below. In the afternoon the Christmas lights are switched on and the Monumental Nativity Scene is unveiled, and after nightfall the Fire Bull, a wooden structure loaded with fireworks, runs through the streets, before the nine o'clock fireworks display. It carries less significance as a public holiday than the main festival of San Mateo, celebrated on 21 September.
Monument
Hermitage of Nuestra Señora de la Alegría, from the 16th century, on the outskirts of Monzón, from which views of the town and its surroundings can be seen; in its vicinity remains of a Roman house with mosaics were found.
Nature
From the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de la Alegría, from the 16th century, on the Lascellas hill, about three kilometres south of Monzón and on the left bank of the Cinca, there are views of the town and the valley. On this same site there once stood a medieval castle that changed hands several times between Christians and Muslims, perhaps destroyed in the time of James I. The present hermitage, in Neo-Romanesque style, suffered immense damage during the Civil War, when its image and altarpieces were lost; restoration work was not completed until 1983, and every Easter Monday it hosts a pilgrimage attended by thousands of people.
Activity
The patronage of Santa Bárbara in Monzón, with a festival on 4 December, goes back to the recovery of the stronghold by Spanish troops on that very day in 1643, after a year and a half of Franco-Catalan occupation during the Guerra dels Segadors.
Activity
The Feria de Otoño de Monzón continues the festival of San Mateo, on 21 September, which has its origin in a medieval fair of horses, livestock and farm produce held on that same date, when summer was ending.
Curiosity
The Templar legacy of Monzón survives above all in its castle, ceded to the Order of the Temple in 1143 and held by the order for some 166 years, until its dissolution. The Templars enlarged the fortress with walls, towers, stables, a refectory and dormitories, and built the church of San Nicolás in the 12th century. There, as a boy, the future James I of Aragon lived under the protection of the knights. In 1309 the castle was besieged by the army of James II following the order to dissolve the Temple, and it served as a refuge for the last Templars before their surrender. Today the Chapter House, measuring 35 by 12 metres, survives, along with the tower of the outbuildings, which housed the order's dormitories and a commandery prison.
Nature
The castle of Monzón stands on a hill that overlooked the ford of the Cinca; from there Pedro I began the conquest of the stronghold in 1089, and today the promontory offers a viewpoint over the river and the fertile lowlands.
Monument
The castle of Monzón, a Templar stronghold in continuous use from the 12th to the 20th century, preserves its keep alongside the tower of Jaime I and the chapel of San Nicolás.
Curiosity
Monzón was a seat of the Cortes of the Crown of Aragon, with historical ties to the first Aragonese kings.
Activity
Although the civic patron saint of Monzón is Santa Bárbara, with a festival on 4 December since the reconquest of the stronghold in 1643, the city also lights the bonfire of San Antón on 17 January, a custom common to the villages of the Cinca Medio.
Monument
The medieval bridge over the Cinca between Monzón and Castejón del Puente measured more than 400 metres with twenty-one arches of fifteen metres' span; a confraternity of San Salvador collected the toll and watched over its upkeep and safety. Today twelve of its piers survive.
Historical milestone
The future Peter I, in his father Sancho Ramírez's lifetime, took in 1089 the fortress that dominated the ford of the Cinca; its fall opened the way to the plain for the Aragonese and foreshadowed the conquest of Barbastro and Huesca.
Historical milestone
Ramón Berenguer IV handed over the castle in 1143 to the Knights Templar as compensation for their renunciation of Alfonso I's will; the stronghold became the order's chief commandery in the kingdom.
Historical milestone
In 1528 King Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, gathered in the Huesca town of Monzón, head town of the Cinca Medio district, the General Courts of the overseas kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon, presided over by himself. It was one of the few general courts of the Principality of Catalonia in which the arms granted a subsidy to the monarch without new constitutions being legislated. During those sessions, Charles V received the personal challenge sent to him by Francis I of France, amid rivalry for dominance over Italy.
Historical milestone
The Franco-Catalan troops took the fortress on 19 May 1642 and occupied it for a year and a half; the Spanish forces recovered it on 4 December 1643, whence comes the patronage of Santa Bárbara.
Historical milestone
Joaquín Costa was born in Monzón on the 14th of September 1846, the son of a small rural landowner, and died in Graus on the 8th of February 1911; he was a jurist, economist, historian and the foremost representative of Spanish regenerationism, a movement he summed up in the formula of school and pantry and which defended the hydraulic policy that brought irrigation to these lands. He obtained a doctorate in Civil and Canon Law in 1872 and in Philosophy and Letters in 1873, and won by competitive examination the chair of Natural Law in Oviedo and, in 1888, that of Political Economy in Santiago de Compostela. Linked to the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Institution of Education), whose bulletin he directed, he published La vida del Derecho (1876) and chaired the Spanish Congress of Colonial and Commercial Geography of 1883.
Historical milestone
The beet sugar factory raised in those years the brick chimney that is seen from all over the floodplain, a symbol of the industrial start of the town before the arrival of the great chemical plants.
Food and drink
Fast-day dish made with desalted and shredded cod, fried with plenty of garlic, dried pepper and oil until the sauce binds; it was eaten in Lent and at the suppers of the Semana Santa brotherhoods.