Village
Municipality of the comarca of Campo de Calatrava, in the province of Ciudad Real, transformed by coal mining, whose systematic extraction began in 1873 and turned a farming town into the largest concentration of workers in the province until the pits closed in 1976; afterwards it was reconverted into a petrochemical hub and today it is aiming at renewable energies and hydrogen research. Of that past there remain the Mining Museum, beside the headframe of the Pozo Norte, and the Terri park, a former eighty-metre spoil heap opened to the public in 2010; every 23 January it commemorates the granting of the title of city by Alfonso XIII with a mass distribution of grilled chorizo.
Nature
The Paseo de San Gregorio is Puertollano's (Ciudad Real) great 19th-century botanical garden, covering 22,383 square metres. It was created in the 19th century next to the Casa de Baños and from 1899 hosted the Fiesta del Árbol, which expanded its trees and gave it the density and diversity of species it retains today. Among its features stand out the Fuente Agria, the Concha de la Música and the Reloj de Flores.
Nature
A spring of medicinal carbonic waters documented since 1575, a historic symbol of Puertollano and the origin of its spa-town fame. Philip II already mentioned it in the Relaciones Topográficas as the “Fuente Aceda”, on account of its acidic waters that emerge boiling. In 1628 the physician Alfonso Limón Montero documented its supposed curative properties, and from 1894 it was bottled commercially as an acidulous alkaline-ferruginous water. Rich in iron and manganese, it stopped flowing in December 2008 because of nearby underground works that affected the water table.
Monument
The Mining Museum of Puertollano (Ciudad Real), set up in the Parque del Pozo Norte, where the basin's most important mining facilities once stood, and built around the shaft's original headframe. It was opened in 2006, funded by FEDER funds and the provincial council. Its first floor deals with the geological formation of coal and the evolution of mining since pre-Roman times, with pieces such as a three-metre fossilised tree; the second covers the socio-economic impact of coal mining on local society, with a scale model of the city's former railway complex. The museum thus recreates the galleries and trades of the coal mining that transformed Puertollano.
Monument
The church of the Assumption is the oldest religious temple in Puertollano (Ciudad Real), built in the 16th century on the site of an earlier church dedicated to Saint Mary. Its Mannerist portals, with Corinthian columns, were dated to 1562 for the north one and 1574 for the south one, adorned with niches, allegories of Christian virtues and grotesques. The tower retains Renaissance windows and shrapnel marks from the first Carlist War; the apse bears a coat of arms of the House of Habsburg and the south façade a sundial dated 1604. The temple suffered fires in 1838, during the Carlist War, and in 1936, during the Civil War, with later reconstructions, the last in 1990. It was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), as a monument, in July 1992.
Monument
Sanctuary of the Virgin of Grace, in Puertollano (Ciudad Real, Campo de Calatrava), built in 1489 by the townspeople in honour of the Virgin, after surviving the plague of 1348. The original hermitage measured 40 metres long by 7 metres wide and was built entirely of stone. Destroyed during the Civil War, it was rebuilt in 1940 with a stucco altarpiece with Solomonic columns. The Virgin of Grace, patroness of Puertollano, is celebrated on 8 September with a crowded procession.
Nature
The Parque del Terri occupies a former artificial spoil heap eighty metres high, built up from the 1920s onward with the ash and coal slag from Calatrava's washery and distillery of coal and bituminous shale, which fell out of use in the 1960s. Puertollano converted it into a public park, opened in June 2010, with information panels at the summit pointing out the open-cast mine, the industrial facilities and the mountains surrounding the city. Several theories exist about the origin of the name, ranging from a French origin (terrier or terril) to the simple interpretation of “the miners' mount”.
Activity
A tradition of Puertollano (Ciudad Real) dating back to the Black Death of 1348, when the epidemic reduced the city's population to thirteen families, about seventy-five people, who prayed through the night for the intercession of the Virgin Mary in the church of Our Lady of the Assumption and were spared the contagion; in gratitude they promised a meal in her honour for the poor of the district, offering a cow for each surviving family. After a second outbreak of plague in 1486, their descendants renewed the vow and built the hermitage dedicated to the Virgin of Grace, patroness of the city ever since. The tradition continues every Thursday of the octave of the Ascension, today with the distribution of blessed bread among residents.
Activity
Every 23 January Puertollano celebrates the anniversary of the granting of city status by Alfonso XIII with a mass distribution of roasted chorizo. The date coincides with the king's own name day and with the feast of Saint Ildefonsus of Toledo, and the day is traditionally spent going out into the countryside to eat chorizo, within the customs linked to the pig slaughter season in the district.
Activity
A fair established in 1895, Puertollano's oldest fair, held in the first week of May with the stalls as its main attraction. It was first held while Fulgencio Arias was mayor, in whose memory there is a monument on the Paseo de San Gregorio, where the fairground was then set up before moving to its present site, opened while Ramón Fernández Espinosa was mayor. In 1995 it marked its first centenary.
Curiosity
Coal mining began in Puertollano in 1873 and closed on 1 January 1976. The town then reinvented itself as a petrochemical hub and today is turning towards renewable energy and hydrogen research.
Historical milestone
The systematic extraction of coal began in 1873 and transformed an agricultural town into the largest concentration of workers in the province; within a few decades the population multiplied and narrow-gauge railways arrived heading for Peñarroya.
Food and drink
A sweet cake of dough flavored with anise that is taken out to the countryside on Easter day to be eaten in the open air; in some households a boiled egg is set into it. It is the sweet finish of a comarca of pilgrimage festivals and communal meals.