Village
Municipality of the comarca of Campos de Hellín, in the province of Albacete, whose tamborada, which floods the streets from the afternoon of Holy Wednesday, has been inscribed since 2018 on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage; in the historic centre the archpriestly church of Santa María de la Asunción, begun in 1499, and the shrine of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, with origins in 1575, stand out. In its district are the Tolmo de Minateda Archaeological Park, with Iberian, Roman, Visigothic and Muslim levels, and the Abrigo Grande, with close to six hundred figures of rock art.
Monument
The Tolmo de Minateda is an archaeological site set on a flat-topped hill in the hamlet of Minateda, at a crossroads that allowed it to be inhabited without interruption for more than 3,000 years, from the Bronze Age to the Islamic occupation. It has been excavated since 1988, led by teams from the University of Alicante and the Archaeological Museum of Albacete, and was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1992. Under the Iberians and Romans it reached, around 9 BC, the rank of municipium, and in the 6th century it became an episcopal see under the name of Eio. In 713 it was included in the pact between the comes Teodomiro and the conqueror Abd al-Aziz, and its continuity until its destruction by Abd al-Rahman II in the late 9th century makes it an exceptional case for studying the transition between Antiquity and Islam.
Nature
A rock shelter some twenty metres wide preserving close to six hundred figures, most of them Levantine art. Made known in 1914, it forms part of the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.
Monument
The archpriestal church of Hellín, whose construction began in 1499. It is considered the first hall-type (columnar) church in the whole diocese of Cartagena. It is the main church of the historic centre and a reference point for the Holy Week processions. Its Renaissance façade, similar to that of Jaén Cathedral, is the work of the school of Andrés de Vandelvira, with a doorway in the shape of an altarpiece and six niches between Corinthian columns dedicated to the Annunciation; the access staircase was added in the late 19th century by the Hellín-born architect Justo Millán. Inside, three naves with a polygonal head are lit by two stone rose windows with flamboyant tracery, and the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, the richest in the church, displays sculptures of the evangelists.
Monument
The sanctuary, dedicated to the patron saint of Hellín, with origins in 1575, stands beside the old walls of the castle and on the site of a former mosque, in an old Mudéjar hermitage built after the Reconquest. The present building is the result of rebuilding in the first half of the 18th century and the late 19th century: the camarín, the crypt and part of the church date from the Baroque period, while the façade and bell tower are due to 19th-century eclecticism. The Rococo camarín, dated 1740, has a polygonal plan in the manner of Gothic chancels and is decorated with gilding, rocaille and Baroque paintings of the life of Mary and Jesus. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) and restored by the architect Justo Millán, it has a distinctive polygonal tower.
Monument
The old Moorish quarter laid out around the Almohad castle, with narrow streets and an irregular layout. It is the area that best preserves the Andalusi imprint of the town.
Monument
The Regional Museum of Hellín, created in 1995 and devoted to the historical and natural heritage of the district, occupies a Modernist building from the late 19th century restored by the town council's Workshop School, with a door carved by the local cabinetmaker Sebastián Guillén and a Modernist wrought-iron gate. It has seven rooms on three floors: on the ground floor, a 16th-century bargueño cabinet and paintings by local artists; on the first floor, the archaeological collection, with pieces such as an Iberian lion from the Tolmo de Minateda and the so-called Sarcophagus of Hellín; and on the second floor, the ethnographic collection, with local ceramics and objects from esparto-grass craft.
Nature
The Cancarix Volcanic Neck is a volcanic dome dated to 7.04 million years ago, revealed by erosion, located in the Sierra de las Cabras, in the hamlet of Cancarix in the municipality of Hellín. It was declared a natural monument in November 1998 and is considered the most important of its kind on the Iberian Peninsula. It is made up of lamproites, ultrapotassic rocks of very deep origin that are very rare in the geological record, whose local variety is called cancalite or cancarixite. Despite its name, it is not a volcanic neck proper, narrow in shape like an obelisk, but instead shows a columnar jointing typical of slow lava cooling, and it has been proposed as a Global Geosite by the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain.
Nature
A range of great environmental richness above the valley of the River Mundo, with pine woods and notable populations of cliff-nesting birds. It is one of the favourite areas for walking in the comarca.
Nature
The largest of the reservoirs on the river Segura, located at the so-called Estrecho de la Herradura, on the boundary between Castilla-La Mancha and the Region of Murcia; the dam stands in the municipality of Moratalla and the reservoir basin is shared between the Albacete municipalities of Hellín, Socovos and Férez. It was built between 1943 and 1952 as part of Francoism's policy of hydraulic works to control flooding on the Segura, with a workforce of up to 350 labourers, many of them political and common prisoners from the jails of Hellín and Las Minas who were working off their sentences. The project, awarded to the same company that built the Valle de los Caídos, cost the lives of several workers, including three who in 1954 fell from a height of 76 metres, in whose memory a cross was erected.
Nature
A riverside spot on the River Mundo in the outlying village of Isso, with traditional bridges and weirs surrounded by market gardens. It is one of the pleasantest waterside corners in the municipal district of Hellín.
Nature
A botanical garden located in the hamlet of Isso, considered one of the most notable in Castilla-La Mancha. It holds a broad collection of tree species beside the river Mundo, with more than 200 species of trees and shrubs from various parts of the world. School visits from the area are regularly organised to teach children about the natural environment.
Nature
A saline enclave of the highest ecological value in the south of the province, shared between the municipal districts of Hellín and Tobarra. It is home to endemic halophyte species found nowhere else in Europe.
Nature
A limestone relief in the area around Hellín, next to the Sierra Seca, of great environmental value. It offers panoramic views over the floodplain of the River Mundo and the fields of the comarca.
Activity
A ritual drumming that floods the streets from the afternoon of Holy Wednesday and in which tens of thousands of drums come to sound. In 2018 UNESCO added it, together with those of Tobarra and Agramón, to the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Activity
A set of events held in Hellín during Holy Week, declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Internacional (Spain's highest official recognition for a festivity) in 2007 and, since 2018, an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by Unesco. It combines traditional processions with the crowded tamboradas, led by the people of Hellín themselves: despite having fewer than 35,000 inhabitants, the town has twenty-nine brotherhoods and confraternities that parade thirty images and sculptural groups. Its origins go back to the preaching of Saint Vincent Ferrer in 1411, accompanied by drummers, the origin of the old penitential processions organised since the 16th century by the Cofradía de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, today the town's patron. It is Hellín's main festival and draws visitors from all over Spain.
Activity
The drumming of Agramón, an outlying village of Hellín, recognised by UNESCO in 2018 alongside those of Hellín and Tobarra. It preserves features of its own within the drumming tradition of the comarca.
Activity
A fair in honour of the Virgen del Rosario, patron saint of the town since 1907, declared of regional tourist interest. It is held between the last Saturday of September and the first Sunday of October.
Activity
The patronal festivities of Las Minas, an outlying village of Hellín, with open-air dances and popular events in late July and early August.
Curiosity
The municipality holds two UNESCO recognitions: the rock art of the Abrigo Grande de Minateda, inscribed in 1998, and the tamborada, added in 2018 as Intangible Cultural Heritage. Few Spanish municipalities hold both distinctions.
Curiosity
With more than thirty thousand inhabitants, Hellín is the most populous municipality in the province of Albacete after the capital. Its municipal district includes a dozen outlying villages spread between the sierra and the floodplain of the River Mundo.
Curiosity
The outlying village of Las Minas owes its name to the old sulphur workings near the confluence of the River Mundo with the Segura. Mining shaped life in this corner of the municipal district for decades.
Curiosity
Volleyball has been an emblematic sport in Hellín ever since its youth team was crowned champion of Spain in 1980. The town has kept a strong grassroots base in the discipline ever since.
Monument
The Hermitage of Saint Raphael stands on a hill in the old town of Hellín, in what was once the old Jewish quarter and is today the district bearing its name, at whose foot lies the Barranco del Judío. Built in the 17th century in Baroque style, it houses the image of the archangel Raphael, benefactor patron of the city together with Our Lady of the Rosary, from a devotion dating back to the 16th century. According to the Relaciones Topográficas that Hellín drew up in 1576 for Philip II, it was believed that Saint Raphael delivered the town from the hailstorms that ruined the harvests, and in his honour the festival held every 24 October is still kept. It is one of the small historic churches still preserved in Hellín's old town.
Nature
Laguna de los Patos, a wetland of natural origin located in the municipality of Hellín (Albacete, Campos de Hellín), among the gypsum outcrops that harbour a distinctive endemic flora. It has been restored and is home to numerous important bird communities.
Curiosity
The municipality of Hellín, in the comarca of Campos de Hellín, is organised into twelve hamlets: Agramón, Cancarix, Agra, Cañada de Agra, Isso, Las Minas, Minateda, La Horca, Mingogil, Nava de Campaña, Torre Uchea and Rincón del Moro. The best known is Minateda, home to the Abrigo Grande de Minateda, a rock shelter with prehistoric cave paintings declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998.
Curiosity
Queen Regent Maria Christina granted Hellín the title of city in 1898, in recognition of the growth of its population, agriculture, industry and trade seen in the late 19th century, as well as the town's constant loyalty to the constitutional monarchy.
Curiosity
The cuisine of Hellín (Albacete), of Murcian roots, has rice with rabbit and snails as its signature dishes, alongside migas made from bread or wheat flour, andrajos, wheat stew and aguamiel, made from pumpkin and honey or sugar diluted in water and cooked. Notable is the production of peladillas, turrones and sweets, especially those of La Elisa, closely tied to the Holy Week processions, in which the nazarenos hand out sweets to children. The surrounding countryside supplies vineyards, almond trees and stone fruit such as peaches and apricots, as well as the artisanal Patatas Rodas fried potatoes and empanadillas filled with potato, tuna, tomato and egg. Also typical are the Holy Week mojete and tortas with ham and sardine.
Activity
The Corpus Christi celebration in Hellín, declared of Regional Tourist Interest in 2007, with elaborate sawdust carpets.
Activity
Feria de Hellín in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, declared of Regional Tourist Interest of Castilla-La Mancha in 2020 (an official regional tourism-interest designation). It begins on the last weekend of September and runs until the first of October, with great liveliness and large crowds; it is considered the province's second most important fair after that of the capital itself, with a broad and varied programme of activities.
Historical milestone
The Visigothic monarchy raised between the late 6th and early 7th centuries on the hill of the Tolmo de Minateda a new episcopal see, Eio, to serve the territories that depended on Ilici while it remained in Byzantine hands; with it came an ambitious urban plan and a three-nave basilica.
Historical milestone
The city of the Tolmo appears as Madinat Iyyuh among the seven strongholds that the Visigothic noble Theodemir agreed to hand over to the Arab conquerors in 713; it declined afterwards, when the capital of the cora moved to the newly founded Murcia.
Historical milestone
Two residents took possession in the 1560s, before the Chief Accounting Office, of the sulfur deposits registered the previous year, the first step of the Royal Mines that Philip II's treasury would end up buying to supply the Crown with gunpowder.
Historical milestone
That day the state monopoly on the manufacture of military gunpowder expired and the sulfur of Hellín was opened to private enterprise; shortly afterwards the Albacete to Cartagena railway passed close to the deposits and their exploitation took off.
Historical milestone
Juan Jiménez Llamas came upon the great painted frieze of Minateda, a panel of almost eighteen meters with more than six hundred figures. The Abbé Breuil published it in 1920 and made it an obligatory reference of Levantine rock art.
Historical milestone
Franco inaugurated the largest dam of its time, built on the Segura river on the border between Albacete and Murcia to check the floods of the Murcian plain; its construction, directed from 1948, was carried out by political prisoners under a sentence-redemption scheme. Between 1943 and 1952 the first works were carried out, with up to 350 workers, among them political and common prisoners from the jails of Hellín and Las Minas. In 1947 a workers' settlement was built with a wash-house, chapel, barracks and shops, and in 1952 the Cenajo Penal Detachment began operating. The work was awarded to Construcciones Civiles, a company that also built the Valle de los Caídos; in total 7,700 workers took part. In 1954 three workers died falling from a height of 76 metres, in whose honour a cross was erected.
Food and drink
Buns made with breadcrumbs, egg, cinnamon and anise which, once fried, are boiled in syrup until they are juicy inside. It is one of the most deeply rooted pan-fried sweets in the Campo de Hellín and in the neighboring Murcian villages.
Food and drink
The olive groves that climb the slopes of the Campo de Hellín give an extra virgin oil that has been recognized on several occasions among the best oils of Castilla-La Mancha; it is cold-milled between November and January, with the olives freshly picked.