Village
Ariño is a municipality in the Andorra-Sierra de Arcos comarca, in the province of Teruel, at the foot of the sierra de Arcos, between the Martín and Escuriza rivers, at 536 m above sea level. It has 605 inhabitants (INE 2025) and is organised into four zones: the old quarter, on the hillside; the new quarter or SAMCA, built by this mining company with workers' housing and recreational areas; el Patrón, next to the mines, with the Antonio Beltrán Centre for the Interpretation of Rock Art; and El Calvario, at the top of the village. On the hill overlooking the town stand the ruins of a castle that may have been built in Muslim times, around the 12th century; the Christian reconquest took place around 1230, and its jurisdiction remained linked to the archbishops of Zaragoza until the 19th century.
Monument
A village built by SAMCA for mine workers, with workers' housing and social facilities, raised in the area known as Secano Cuartana, on the lower part of the slope. At its two ends open two squares, the Plaza de la Minería and the Plaza del Carbón.
Monument
A suspension footbridge over the River Martín, in the municipal district of Ariño.
Monument
18th-century church of el Salvador in Ariño, of rubble masonry and brick with a Baroque tower, three naves and a marked tilt caused by ground subsidence a century ago.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of Ariño between the second and third weeks of August, coinciding with San Roque and la Asunción; on 4 December Santa Bárbara, patroness of miners, is celebrated.
Monument
In Ariño the Romanesque, 12th-century ermita del Pilar is preserved, of which the doorway remains beside the ruins of the castle; and that of Santa Bárbara, of brick, sacked and destroyed in the Civil War and restored in the 1940s by the mining company SAMCA.
Nature
Landscape resulting from mining activity in the municipal area of Ariño, where coal and lignite mining began in 1914 with the opening of the Santa María pit. From 1940 the activity was run by the Sociedad Anónima Minera Catalano-Aragonesa (SAMCA), and from the 1980s onward extraction switched to open-cast mining. Ariño came to hold Spain's second-largest lignite reserve.
Monument
The town hall of Ariño, renovated, closes one side of the plaza Mayor next to the church; its façade preserves a plaque naming the town house and a clock.
Activity
Feast of San Antón, on 17 January, in Ariño, a mining village where the Santa María shaft opened up coal mining in 1914, continued from 1940 by SAMCA (Sociedad Anónima Minera Catalano-Aragonesa). The municipality became Spain's second-largest lignite reserve and one of the largest in Europe; next to the old town the SAMCA neighbourhood grew up, and the village still has squares dedicated to Mining and to Coal.
Activity
As in other villages of Andorra-Sierra de Arcos, in Ariño bonfires are lit both for San Antón and for San Blas, on 3 February, in a municipality whose modern history is tied to the mining of the Santa María pit.
Historical milestone
Around 1230 the Christian troops recovered Ariño, which was handed to the bishop of Zaragoza. In 1242 it was integrated into the tenancy of Albalate and remained under archiepiscopal jurisdiction until the nineteenth century.
Historical milestone
During the Civil War the town applied a collectivist program that Joaquín Ascaso, president of the Regional Defense Council of Aragon between 1936 and 1937, cited as the example where libertarian communism had developed most successfully.
Historical milestone
The opening of the Santa María pit in 1914 transformed the municipality's economy. From 1940 the Sociedad Anónima Minera Catalano-Aragonesa built housing, schools and facilities, and the population reached its peak in the fifties.
Food and drink
The hives set in the scrubland of rosemary, thyme and gorse produce artisan honeys that are packed unpasteurized. Beekeeping supplements the income of the farms in the villages around the Martín.