Village
Andorra is the capital of the Andorra-Sierra de Arcos comarca, in the province of Teruel, with 7223 inhabitants. It sits on the slope of a hill at 714 metres above sea level, between the valleys of the Martín and Guadalope rivers and beside the Regallo river. The place-name may derive from the Celtic "gate of the winds", though it has also been linked to the devotion to San Macario, patron saint of the town. Next to the old town rises the Barrio de la Estación, built in 1944 by the Calvo Sotelo company for the working of bituminous shales and poor-quality coal, an activity that marked the 20th century in the municipality. Its municipal area preserves sites from the early Iron Age, such as Cabecico Royo, and the Iberian settlement of El Cabo, from the 5th century BC.
Monument
The Andorra-Sierra de Arcos Mining Museum, known as MWINAS, opened in 2005 on the former facilities of the Pozo de San Juan (San Juan shaft), in Andorra (Teruel), abandoned around 1960. It presents the whole comarca as an open-air mining museum, with two areas: the Pozo de San Juan itself, which preserves the winding tower, the engine room and the warehouses, and an Interpretation Space in Val de Ariño, between Andorra and Alloza, over the restored open-cast mines of Corta Alloza and Corta Barrabasa, worked by Endesa. The winding tower, the emblem of the site, is a 44-metre iron structure built with the same hot-riveting system as the Eiffel Tower; the engine building preserves an English Robey winding engine from the 1950s.
Monument
A tower built around 1660-1661, with the coat of arms of Andorra carved in stone beneath the clock.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of Andorra from 7 to 11 September in honour of San Macario, venerated at an 18th-century hermitage on the mountain that bears his name. The town also celebrates the Virgin and San Roque on 15 and 16 August, with chicken races.
Monument
Parish church of Andorra, built between the 16th and 17th centuries, the main religious building of the comarca's capital. It is a building of considerable size, with a single nave with chapels set between massive buttresses, built of sandstone following a unified design. Its tower, at the south-east corner, combines ashlar masonry in the lower sections with brick in the upper ones, the result of a mid-17th-century extension, and changes from a square to an octagonal plan, blending an incipient Baroque style with the Mudejar tradition. On the exterior, its monumental Mannerist-style façade stands out, a portal-retable crowned by a pediment sheltering the image of a crucified figure. It is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Curiosity
The coal mining tradition that shaped the comarca's economy during the 20th century, now recorded in the Museo Minero de Andorra.
Monument
Andorra preserves two hermitages: that of the Virgen del Pilar, with a 12th-century Romanesque core and Gothic alterations from the 14th to the 16th centuries, consisting of a rectangular nave divided into five bays; and that of San Macario, from the 18th century, on the mountain of the same name. The hermitage of the Virgen del Pilar is covered with ribbed vaults and its keystones bear the coats of arms of the Zaragoza prelates from the various periods of construction, while the corbels are decorated with plant motifs from the local flora. Beneath the wooden upper choir, lit by an oculus, is the doorway, flanked by a continuous bench. The very plain façade has a semicircular arch topped by a large oculus and a small bell-gable.
Monument
Historic town hall of Andorra, capital of the comarca.
Activity
In Andorra the bonfire of San Antón is lit at seven in the evening in the plaza de la Iglesia; the following morning hot chocolate with raspa'o (crushed ice) is handed out, and in the afternoon, grilled meats.
Curiosity
Process of economic reconversion of Andorra-Sierra de Arcos following the closure of the coal mining operations. Lignite was discovered in the area in 1914 and extraction intensified at the Barrabasa mine, in Alloza, until 1918, then declined and was revived from 1936. From the 1950s Andorra's activity remained tied to coal, with a railway that from 1953 carried the ore to Escatrón, and in the 1980s underground mines gave way to open-cast operations. The Andorra thermal power plant, running since 1981 with a capacity of 1,101.4 MW, closed on 30 June 2020, bringing an end to coal-fired electricity production in the comarca; today the extraction of other materials continues, such as clays and industrial rocks.
Curiosity
Former thermal power plant of Andorra (Teruel), linked to the coal mining that gave the comarca its name. Officially known as the Teruel thermal power plant, it came into operation in 1981 with a capacity of 1,101.4 MW and was owned by Endesa. It was a coal-fired plant burning lignite, with a sulphur content of around 7%, divided into three generating units of 350 MW each. Its chimney reached 343 metres in height, which for years made it the third-tallest structure in Spain. In 1992 filters were installed which, according to Endesa, would remove more than 90% of the sulphur dioxide generated by combustion from 2008 onwards.
Activity
In Andorra-Sierra de Arcos it is traditional to light bonfires both for San Antón, on 17 January, and for San Blas, on 3 February; Andorra, capital of the comarca, follows this custom common to its villages.
Curiosity
The legacy of Andorra's mining railway preserves the heritage of the Andorra-Escatrón line, built between 1947 and 1953 by the Empresa Nacional Calvo Sotelo (ENCASO). With 45.761 kilometres of Iberian gauge track between Escatrón, Samper, Cabeza Gorda and Andorra, it carried coal from the Andorra mines to the Escatrón thermal power plant and, from 1979, to the one in Teruel: in 1975 it moved more than 1.1 million tonnes. It was operated by ENCASO and later, from the 1970s, by ENDESA. The Escatrón-Samper section closed in 1978 and the last steam train ran in 1984; the Teruel power plant closed in 2020, ending commercial traffic. Today it stands as testimony to the comarca's industrial heritage, with locomotives preserved at the Railway Museum in Madrid and at various points in Aragón.
Monument
The old lonja of Andorra is recognisable today by its arcades, which stand out in the plaza de la Iglesia.
Historical milestone
On 27 September 1148 Bishop Bernardo II of Zaragoza donated several churches to the cathedral chapter, among them that of Andorra. The center had arisen as a stock-raising district dependent on Albalate, under the name of Las Masadicas Royas.
Historical milestone
The archbishopric of Zaragoza controlled the town until 1613, the year in which Archbishop Pedro Manrique granted it civil and criminal jurisdiction. Andorra thus gained a capacity for self-government within the ecclesiastical lordship.
Historical milestone
The discovery of coal in 1914 completely changed the local economy. The Barrabasa, María and Previsión Rectificada workings operated until the middle of the twentieth century and gave rise to the comarca's mining vocation.
Historical milestone
The rebel army occupied Andorra on 13 March 1938 during the Aragon offensive. During the preceding months the town had operated as a collective, with communal distribution of land and the pooling of resources.
Activity
The comarca capital hosts once a month a market at which the area's producers sell oil, honey, cheese, cured sausages and vegetable preserves. It is the usual meeting point between local producers and consumers.