Village
L'Arboç is a town and municipality in the Baix Penedès comarca that preserves medieval walls and the Papiol tower. It is believed to have arisen from a Roman settlement called Stabulo Novo, beside the Via Augusta; references to it exist from the year 991. It was a vila reial (royal town), not subject to a feudal lord, which gave it its own privileges: a weekly market since 1200, the Santa Llúcia fair since 1230, a public notary and a Jewish quarter on the carrer de la Plateria. In 1808 its residents resisted the attack of General Chabran's Napoleonic troops during the Peninsular War. It is famous for its puntes de coixí (bobbin lace), with its own museum, among the most reputed in Catalonia.
Monument
A medieval tower in the district of l'Arboç, Baix Penedès comarca, listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). Oblong in plan with rounded ends, it formed part of a network of watchtowers and was built around the year 1000 of stone, mountain lime and sand, with courses of opus spicatum visible in its walls, over a metre thick. The site is documented since 1070, when it was an outlying dependency of the castle of Castellet, and the Papiol family appear as lords of the place from the 12th century. The tower, which came to have two storeys, survives only in its southern half since torrential rains brought down the other half in 1958.
Monument
Sant Julià de l'Arboç is the parish church of the municipality, declared a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). It has a single nave measuring 40 by 12 metres with six side chapels on each side and a pentagonal apse, covered by a ribbed vault in the Gothic tradition; the façade features a large four-column portal with a frieze, a rose window and two turrets 28 metres high, one with a clock and the other with wooden rattles. Behind the apse stands the capella del Santíssim, cross-shaped with a dome over the crossing. In the capella dels Dolors, built in the 17th century next to the old Estudi Vell, the Lignum vitae de l'Arboç is preserved, Gothic mural paintings from the early 14th century discovered and restored in 1968.
Monument
Remains of the wall that enclosed the medieval and early-modern core of l'Arboç, in the Baix Penedès, declared a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). It would today be embedded within houses on several streets of the town, whose walls may rest on its remains; it included towers, access gateways, ditches and other defensive elements. Vestiges survive underground, located during archaeological interventions: in 2010, next to the plaza de Antonio Machado, a stretch of the medieval wall was delimited along with a ditch filled in during the modern era, and another stretch was located in the plaza de la Badalota, blocked up in the 17th century. Its hypothetical perimeter would run along the streets Rafael de Casanova, Rambla Josep Gener and Carrer de la Muralla.
Activity
The Festa Major de l'Arboç is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of August in this town of the Baix Penedès (Tarragona), in honour of San Julián and the co-patron saints Justino, Fortunato, Cándida and Victoria. Documented since 1876, it has kept for more than a century the structure typical of the main festivals of the Penedès, with the popular procession as its central axis: the Ball de diables, the dragon Badalot, the Ball de bastons, giants, small giants, dwarfs and big-heads, the donkey Garot and the castells team Minyons de l'Arboç. On the Sunday, the main day, the matinades, the castells display and the procession of San Julián take place, with the traditional carretillada of the Ball de diables. It is recognised as a festival of national heritage interest.
Historical milestone
On 10 June 1808, at the start of the war against the French, the Napoleonic troops sacked and burned the villa, situated on the royal road from Barcelona to Tarragona. It was assaulted again in January 1836, during the First Carlist War.
Historical milestone
Joan Roquer i Marí raised between 1877 and 1889 a house crowned by a half-scale replica of the Seville minaret, of fifty-two metres, with a courtyard inspired by that of the Lions. It was a commission made for his wife after travelling through Andalusia.
Historical milestone
Bobbin lace occupied a good part of the women of the villa from the nineteenth century and came to be a home-based export industry. The trade is preserved in a museum of its own and in the lacemaking schools that maintain the technique.