Logbook · 8 places

What to see and do in Ejea de los Caballeros

What to see and do in Ejea de los Caballeros (Cinco Villas, Zaragoza): 8 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Activities · 3 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

How far each place is from the centre of Ejea de los Caballeros

Church of Ejea de los Caballeros 50 m

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Spain › Aragon › Zaragoza › Cinco Villas › Ejea de los Caballeros

What to see and do in Ejea de los Caballeros

Ejea de los Caballeros
Village
Ejea de los Caballeros is the capital of the Cinco Villas, in the province of Zaragoza, with 17,135 inhabitants (INE 2023) and one of the five historic towns that give the comarca its name. With 613.50 km², it is the second-largest municipality in Aragón; its municipal area includes the settlements of Farasdués and Rivas and the colonisation villages of Pinsoro, El Bayo, Bardenas, Valareña, Santa Anastasia and El Sabinar. Located at an altitude of 320 metres on predominantly flat terrain, it is 72 km from Zaragoza and 43 km from Tudela. Its continental Mediterranean climate is one of the most extreme in Spain, with winters that can drop below -18 °C and summers exceeding 40 °C.
Bardenas Reales (Aragonese Side)
Nature
The Aragonese side of the Bárdenas Reales, known as the Aragonese Bardena, is the geographical continuation of the Navarrese Bárdenas within the Cinco Villas, divided among the territories of Ejea de los Caballeros, Sádaba and Tauste; it occupies about 10,000 hectares within the so-called Bardena Negra and reaches its highest point at the Alto de la Negra, at 648 metres. This semi-desert territory, declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in the year 2000, is also protected as a Special Protection Area for Birds (SPA) and a Site of Community Importance (SCI); its landscape of ravines, flatlands and isolated hillocks was formed by erosion over a cold steppe climate, with rainfall of between 300 and 450 mm annually.
Church of Ejea de los Caballeros
Monument
Ejea preserves two great parish churches: Santa María de la Corona, from 1174, in Romanesque style with Cistercian influence (south portal) and a west portal remodeled in Baroque style around 1649-1650; and San Salvador, consecrated in 1222, in the Romanesque-to-Gothic transitional style, built as a fortress-church with a crenellated tower, housing sculptures from the workshop of the Master of Agüero and a mid-15th-century main altarpiece by Blasco de Grañén and Martín de Soria. San Salvador was declared a Monumento Nacional (Spain's heritage designation in force until 1931) in 1931.
Festivities of Ejea de los Caballeros
Activity
Ejea de los Caballeros celebrates its patronal festivities from the last weekend of August to the first of September in honor of the Virgen de la Oliva, whose hermitage received documented donations from 1245; on 24 June the festivities of San Juan, the town's oldest patron saint, are also celebrated.
Conquest of Exea by Alfonso I
Historical milestone
Alfonso I the Battler took in 1105 the Muslim stronghold of Siya, which came to be called Exea and remained as a base of operations for the advance towards Zaragoza. The villa was repopulated with Franks and knights, the origin of the surname de los Caballeros.
Juliana Larena and the Sieges of Zaragoza
Historical milestone
Juliana Larena y Fenollé, a native of Ejea, took part in the defense of Zaragoza during the first French siege, in 1808. Her figure joined those of the women who fought at the batteries of El Portillo and was recorded in the chronicles of the Peninsular War.
Bardenas Canal and the colonization villages
Historical milestone
The Yesa reservoir and the Bardenas canal, inaugurated in 1959, transformed the dry farmland of the Cinco Villas into irrigated land. The National Institute of Colonisation raised six new villages in the municipal district of Ejea, among them Valareña, Pinsoro and El Bayo.
Farmed snails of the Cinco Villas
Food and drink
Ejea is one of the centres of Spanish snail farming, with farms that breed snails for national consumption. In the local cuisine they are stewed with tomato, ham and chilli, or grilled over embers, and are a habitual dish at group meals and fairs.