Village
Amposta is the capital of the Montsià county, in the province of Tarragona, situated on the banks of the river Ebro, with 23,080 inhabitants (INE 2025). The castle crowns the town, and various medieval watchtowers survive within its municipal area. It stands on the boundary between the continental shelf and the Ebro delta, whose natural park occupies part of the municipality. Its economy has traditionally been based on agriculture, especially rice growing, and on services. Within the municipality, remains have been found of an Iberian settlement with seven grain silos next to the castle and a necropolis at la Oriola, which lead some to place here the city of Hibera, capital of the Ilercavones before the Roman conquest, although its location is also disputed with Tortosa.
Monument
Rectangular tower (16 by 12 metres) about 17 metres high, with ashlar walls bonded with mortar, built on a rocky outcrop four kilometres upstream from Amposta; its base may predate the conquest of Tortosa in 1148, although the present structure, from around 1280, dates from the 13th century. It has three levels and a crenellated terrace: on the ground floor, with a pointed vault, livestock was kept; the first floor preserves a hooded chimney and a bread oven; the second, or main floor, is also covered by a pointed vault. It preserves remains of battlements and machicolations at three of its corners, and twin windows of Romanesque tradition. It controlled the mouth of the Ebro together with the Campredó tower on the opposite bank; today it is municipal property and was restored in the 1990s.
Monument
Defence tower of Amposta, also called Forcheron or Forxerona, standing about five kilometres south of the town, near the l'Oriola tower and the lock of the old navigation canal from Amposta to Sant Carles de la Ràpita. The oldest part is the tower itself, rectangular in plan and three storeys high, with a voussoired semicircular-arch door and an original window above two corbels that once supported a now-vanished machicolation. In the 19th century a farmhouse with a storeroom was attached to the tower, which dates from the 16th-17th centuries, next to a well still in use, and on the other side there are storerooms and stables with a brick arcade. Together with the towers of l'Oriola and Poquessalses it formed a defensive triangle for Amposta, and it remains inhabited as rural accommodation on a working farm.
Monument
Rubble-masonry watchtower, rectangular in plan, about eight to ten metres high, located to the west of the municipality of Amposta, at the old Mas de Sunyer farmhouse, with which it today forms a group alongside a later building. Built in the 16th century, probably after the Algerian raid of 1540, it formed with the towers of Futxeron and Poquessalses a defensive triangle for the town, laid out differently from the usual pattern of separated tower pairs. The door, a voussoired arch facing the sea, opens beneath a machicolation, with two tall windows and arrow slits above, the upper one with a moulded lintel and sill. Next to the tower there was a farmhouse from the early 19th century, now demolished, of which a well survives. It is privately owned and can only be seen from outside.
Monument
The Torre de Poquessalses is the smallest of the three towers of Amposta's defensive cordon, forming the third vertex of an irregular triangle. Rectangular in plan, about five by seven metres, with a prismatic body six or seven metres high, its top, formerly a flat terrace, is completely deteriorated. On the main facade the door opens with a voussoired semicircular arch, framed by regular ashlars, and remains of a machicolation are preserved at the top; inside, a barrel vault stands out, along with two openings in the corners that gave access to the upper part of the tower. It was built in the late 16th century, after a corsair landing captured the town in 1540. It stands within an enclosed, privately owned estate.
Monument
The Castell d'Amposta, which gives its name to the capital of the Montsià, was the seat of the Hospitaller castellany of Amposta from when, around 1150, Ramon Berenguer IV ceded the territory to the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, which established its commandery there. In 1280 King Peter the Great exchanged it for other territories, and in 1384 it passed to the Order of Sant Jordi d'Alfama. Between 1465 and 1466 it withstood a siege during the Catalan civil war, until it surrendered on 21 June 1466. Today Gothic remains survive: an ogival arch more than 6 metres high, storage chambers from the 14th-15th centuries, the foundations of the Torre de Sant Joan, stretches of the wall beside the river, and a double moat cut into the rock, about 6 metres deep. It is declared a cultural asset of national interest.
Monument
Old defence tower at Poblenou del Delta, in the municipality of Amposta, built in 1576 by order of Philip II to protect the port of the Alfacs from Saracen piracy, as part of the Torres dels Alfacs, of which only this one and the Codonyol tower were ever built. It operated for about 250 years, with a garrison of about a dozen soldiers, including a captain and a chaplain, and lived through episodes of the Guerra dels Segadors and the Guerra del Francés, in which it was probably destroyed. Between March and May 1938 it served as a shelter for families from Sant Carles de la Ràpita fleeing the front of the Civil War. Changes to the coastline have left it about fifty metres out into the sea, in the shallow waters of the Ebro Delta, and only its lower, truncated-pyramid part survives.
Monument
The church of Amposta is found in the capital of the Montsià, protected in the 16th century by a line of defensive towers facing the coast — Sant Joan, Futxeron, la Carrova, l'Oriola and Poquessalses — built after the corsair landing that took the town in 1540.
Activity
Amposta's Festa Major is held in the capital of the Montsià, whose Torre de Sant Joan, built in 1576 by order of Felipe II, now stands some fifty metres out to sea owing to changes in the coastline.
Activity
Amposta's Festa Major d'Hivern is held in the capital of the Montsià, whose Torre de la Carrova, built around 1280 on a rocky outcrop, controlled, together with that of Campredó, the mouth of the Ebro.
Historical milestone
Ramon Berenguer IV donated the castle of Amposta to the Order of the Hospital in 1149 and the town became the head of the castellany that grouped its domains in the Crown of Aragon. The stronghold controlled the crossing and the mouth of the Ebro.
Monument
Built between 1915 and 1921 to a design by the engineer José Eugenio Ribera, it was the second suspension bridge in the world raised with reinforced concrete. It has a span of 134 metres; the Italian air force brought it down on 10 March 1938 and it reopened in 1939.