Village
Cariñena is the capital of its region, in the province of Zaragoza, and gives its name to the grape variety that forms the heart of the Cariñena denomination of origin; it has 3,530 inhabitants (INE 2025). It sits in the middle valley of the Ebro, at 591 m of altitude. Its place name dates from Roman times: Pliny called the settlement Carae, and with the suffix -iniana formed Cariniana, 'the farmstead' of the owner Carinius, which evolved in the Middle Ages into today's Cariñena. After Romanisation, which followed the fall of Numantia, it supplied wine to nearby Caesaraugusta. Occupied by the Muslims in 714, it formed part of the Upper March of al-Andalus and later of the Taifa of Zaragoza until, besieged and taken in 1119, it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Aragon.
Monument
The Fuente de la Mora stands opposite the town hall of Cariñena. Circular in shape, it is decorated with four ducks surrounding a column crowned by a female figure carrying a basket, and was erected in the late 19th century. The wine tradition dates back to 1585, when Philip II was received in the town with wine, bread, fruit and olive oil. Today, on the September Día de la Vendimia, the fountain stops flowing with water and gushes wine instead, in a day that includes the first treading of grapes in the Town Hall square.
Activity
A festival that has marked the start of the grape harvest since the 1960s, with the Exaltación del Vino at the Fuente de la Mora, from which some 6,000 litres of wine flow.
Curiosity
The Cariñena grape, also known as carignan or mazuela, is a red grape variety that ampelographers place as originating in the town of Cariñena, in Aragon. It came to be the most important red variety in Spain and later spread throughout the Mediterranean, reaching its greatest extent in the south of France, where it covered 167,000 hectares in 1988. It is a vine with late budding and ripening, which needs warm climates and gives high yields, of up to 200 hectolitres per hectare, although it is difficult to harvest by machine. Today France remains the largest producer, with about 53,000 hectares, followed by Spain, with close to 6,100, as well as plantations in Italy, California and Chile.
Monument
Headquarters of the Cariñena Designation of Origin and a wine museum housed in a former 1918 winery, regarded as an outstanding example of Modernist industrial architecture in the area. The museum is dedicated to the people of the comarca who have devoted themselves to viticulture for centuries, and it promotes the wines of Cariñena and the distinctive features of the Campo de Cariñena.
Curiosity
The Cariñena designation of origin, registered with the European Union on 7 October 1989, is one of the oldest wine designations of origin in Spain and gives its name to the cariñena grape variety. It covers 16 municipalities around Cariñena, about 50 kilometres south of Zaragoza, with 15,259 hectares of vineyard, 1,954 winegrowers and 45 wineries in 2010. The vineyards grow between 400 and 800 metres in altitude on reddish limestone soils, under an extreme continental climate marked by the cierzo, a cold north wind. The winemaking tradition goes back to the Middle Ages, when it flourished under monastic protection. Garnacha tinta predominates, with 55% of the area, followed by mazuela and tempranillo, with macabeo as the main white variety.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of Cariñena from 13 to 18 September, in honour of the Santo Cristo de Santiago, with bull runs, bullfighting events and a final sardine cookout with the twinned town of Santurce.
Activity
Cariñena's winter festival is held in the town that Pedro I of Castile took and sacked in 1363 during the War of the Two Pedros, and which in 1909 received from Alfonso XIII the title of city following the wine boom brought by the narrow-gauge railway to Zaragoza.
Activity
Market devoted to wine in Cariñena, home of the Denomination of Origin.
Monument
The Museo del Vino de Cariñena is found in the town that the troops of Pedro I of Castile sacked in 1363 during the War of the Two Pedros, and which in 1909 received from Alfonso XIII the title of city following the wine boom brought by the narrow-gauge railway to Zaragoza.
Curiosity
A network of cooperative wineries in Cariñena (Zaragoza), the heart of the Campo de Cariñena Designation of Origin, where wine production dates back to Roman times and grew strongly at the end of the 19th century, when the French phylloxera outbreak boosted Aragonese exports. In 1932, when the designations of origin were created, the Cariñena Oenological Station was inaugurated. One of the old wineries, from 1918, is now home to the Wine Museum and is a unique example of modernist industrial architecture in the area; the designation of origin now brings together about nine wineries.
Monument
The hermitage of Cariñena is the santuario de la Virgen de Lagunas, about 7 km from the village amid vineyards; Baroque in style with Mudéjar elements and a 17th-century fabric, it incorporates an original 15th-century chapel and a 16th-century tower. It is a place of pilgrimage, traditionally on Easter Monday.
Activity
The Feria de la Uva de Cariñena celebrates mostillo, a sweet made by boiling the must from the grape harvest until it forms a dense paste left to dry in moulds, one of the town's signature products.
Monument
The town hall of Cariñena is a 16th-century Aragonese-type palace in Renaissance style: its two original floors have arcades on columns open to the outside, and in the 17th century a third floor was added with the typical Aragonese gallery and a deeply projecting eave; a clock tower that marks the city's urban life crowns the building.
Historical milestone
James I freed the town in 1248 from its direct dependence on Daroca and integrated it into the sesma of Langa, within the Community of Villages of Daroca. That legal framework ordered the government of the territory, its pastures and its militias until its dissolution in the 19th century.
Historical milestone
The troops of Peter I of Castile took the town in 1363, during the War of the Two Peters. The chronicler Jerónimo Zurita wrote that the Castilian king ordered all who defended it put to the sword, an episode that ruined the settlement and forced its defenses to be rebuilt.
Historical milestone
The opening of the narrow-gauge line to Zaragoza made it possible to get the comarca's wine out just when phylloxera was destroying the French vineyards and sending demand soaring. The boom that followed led Alfonso XIII to grant the town the title of city in 1909.
Food and drink
Sweet made by boiling the must of the grape harvest until a dense paste is obtained that is left to dry in moulds, sometimes with walnuts or almonds. Along with the moscatelillos it figures among the products with a name of their own of the town and it uses up the campaign's surplus grapes.