Village
Ulldecona is a town in the Montsià, in the province of Tarragona, with 6714 inhabitants. Its castle, in a border area with the Saracens after the Reconquista, passed from the Montcada family to the Knights Hospitaller in 1173 and returned to them in 1191; in 1274 the first settlers, alongside the fortress at Ulldecona Vella, obtained permission to move to the valley and found the present-day municipality. The town was besieged in 1463 and 1465 for its loyalty to the Catalan Diputació, and occupied by French troops between 1810 and 1813. In the Godall mountains is found the largest concentration of Levantine rock art in Catalonia, fourteen rock shelters with more than 400 figures up to 10,000 years old.
Monument
Fortified complex situated at the top of the Puig del Castell, in Ulldecona (Montsià), on the banks of the Sénia river, today the border between Catalonia and the Valencian Community. Probably of Arab origin, it passed in 1148 to the Montcada family of Tortosa; in 1173 it passed to the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, which in 1180 was commissioned to build a new Christian castle. Situated on the frontier with the Muslims, it suffered continuous attacks, so that in 1191 the Hospitallers returned custody of it to the Montcada; it remained part of that frontier until the campaigns of James I in Valencia, begun around 1230, pushed the border south. It today consists of a doubly walled precinct, a round tower, another quadrangular tower of the Order of Malta, a church dedicated to the Virgin of the Angels, and ruins of other vanished buildings.
Monument
House of the Hospitaller commander of Ulldecona, built in the 15th century as the administrative seat of the commandery created in 1227, with Ramon de Cervera as its first commander; only the Gothic façade survives, since the interior disappeared when it passed into private hands after the commandery was dissolved in 1851.
Curiosity
Group of shelters with prehistoric rock art in the municipality of Ulldecona, part of the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is made up of ten rock shelters located in the Ermites area, on the south-eastern slope of the Godall mountains, near the hermitage of la Pietat, where the Rock Art Interpretation Centre is located, opened in 2005 and managed by the Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia, which offers guided visits to shelter I. Most of the paintings belong to the post-Palaeolithic Levantine style and depict hunting scenes, with deer, goats, bovids, bows, arrows and human figures — archers and female figures, among others — present in almost all the panels.
Activity
Ulldecona's Festa Major is held beside the Gothic church of Sant Lluc, begun in 1373, in a town where in 1836, during the First Carlist War, Ramon Cabrera's bands defeated the Liberal forces.
Activity
Ulldecona's Festa Major d'Hivern is held beside the Gothic church of Sant Lluc, begun in 1373, in a town that preserves rock shelters with prehistoric rock art included on the Unesco World Heritage list.
Activity
The Fira de l'Oli del Montsià is held in Ulldecona, a district where the Olivera Farga de l'Arion grows, a thousand-year-old olive tree from which oil is extracted from centuries-old trees.
Monument
The ermita (hermitage) of Ulldecona houses the image of the Virgin of la Pietat, patron saint of this town in the Montsià where, in 1836, during the first Carlist war, Ramon Cabrera's bands defeated the liberal forces. The old image and the hermitage itself were destroyed in the summer of 1936, during the civil war; the local artist Vicent Barrera carved the present one in 1939, solemnly blessed on 31 August of that year and then carried in procession to the hermitage. Since then, every first Sunday of the week of 12 September the festa de la Pietat is celebrated, and every five years -in years ending in 4 and 9- the Festes Quinquennals, when residents go up to fetch the image and parade it for nine days through the streets of the village, decorated with vànoves (embroidered bedspreads) and floral motifs.
Historical milestone
In 1836, during the First Carlist War, the bands of Ramon Cabrera defeated the liberal forces here. The district, on the border with the País Valencià and at the foot of the Montsià, was a recurrent scene of guerrilla warfare in the lower Ebro.
Monument
Gothic church begun in 1373 that presides over the old centre, at the foot of the hill crowned by the fortress. Beside it, the municipality preserves modernist architecture by Cèsar Martinell, a disciple of Gaudí, within a town centre of medieval origin.
Food and drink
Olive tree of the farga variety with a trunk of exceptional girth to which an age of more than a thousand years is attributed, on the estate of l'Arion. It is the best-known specimen of the group of monumental olive trees from which the thousand-year-old-tree oil is extracted.