Village
Cornudella de Montsant is a town in the Priorat, in Tarragona, at the foot of the Montsant range and the Prades mountains, which besides the town itself includes the settlements of Albarca and Ciurana, the village perched on the rock next to the castle bearing its name. With 999 inhabitants, it lives off the production of wine and hazelnuts and off tourism; the nearby Ciurana reservoir, built in the sixties and seventies, supplies the town with drinking water. Already mentioned in 1190 as Cornutella, it belonged to the county of Prades and was sacked by French troops in 1650 and 1812; its sometent took part in the battle of the Coll de la Teixeta in 1811. The 19th century brought a period of economic prosperity cut short by the phylloxera plague.
Monument
The castle of Siurana crowns the village of the same name, in the municipal area of Cornudella de Montsant (Priorat), situated at 737 metres above sea level on a limestone cliff, at the end of the Prades mountains and beside the Siurana river; it was the last Muslim stronghold in Catalonia, conquered in 1153. The area also includes the Romanesque church of Santa María de Siurana. Settlement of the place dates back to prehistoric times: in 1909 numerous polished flint stones were found there which, according to the prehistorian Vilaseca, correspond to a blade workshop, long, narrow blades with a triangular or polygonal cross-section.
Monument
Church in Cornudella de Montsant.
Monument
Siurana is a village in the municipal area of Cornudella de Montsant (Priorat), perched at 737 metres above sea level on a crag, with barely 33 inhabitants. It was the last Muslim stronghold in Catalonia, capital of the taifa of the same name, and its castle held out until the Christian conquest, around 1153-1154, led by Bertran de Castellet; it later served as a prison for the medieval aristocracy. It preserves the church of Santa Maria, a notable Romanesque building from the 12th-13th centuries, with a single nave and a pointed barrel vault. The complex has been declared a historic ensemble, an asset of cultural interest, since 1961, and its mountains are today a national and international meeting point for rock climbing.
Monument
The Celler Cooperatiu de Cornudella de Montsant, a modernist winery located at the entrance to the village, was built between 1919 and 1922 by the architect Cèsar Martinell i Brunet, commissioned by the Cornudella Agricultural Union. The building, rectangular in plan with a basement and several sections of different heights, made use of a hollow in the ground to place the underground vats at surface level, covered with parabolic brick arches and Catalan vaults; inside it houses vats with a capacity of 11,000 hectolitres. The main façade, of exposed stone, is organised on three levels: a plinth with the round-arched entrance door, a rendered section with a large three-light window, and the upper crowning of the building.
Nature
The Sierra de Montsant is a massif of spectacular crags in Priorat (Tarragona), whose highest point is the Roca Corbatera, at 1,162.8 metres. Formed predominantly of conglomerates that form crags along the main ridge, it covers some 135 km² within the Catalan Pre-Coastal Range. A significant part has been a Natural Park since 2002. It preserves kermes oak and holm oak woods, pine forests and riverside vegetation with poplars, ash trees and willows, and is home to fauna such as the genet, the wildcat, the polecat and birds of prey such as the peregrine falcon, Bonelli's eagle, the golden eagle and the eagle-owl. The massif borders the DOQ Priorat to the north.
Activity
The Festa Major de Cornudella de Montsant is held in the town that is home to Siurana, the last Andalusi stronghold in Catalonia, surrendered in 1153 to the troops of Ramón Berenguer IV.
Nature
The Siurana river crosses the Priorat comarca over a course of about 50 kilometres between the Prades mountains, where it rises at 715 metres above sea level in the municipal area of la Febró, and its mouth on the Ebro, in Garcia, at 21 metres above sea level. As it passes through Cornudella de Montsant it feeds the Siurana reservoir, whose waters are also diverted towards the Riudecanyes stream. Further downstream, next to the Venta del Pubill weir, it preserves one of the best riparian forests in the whole basin. The river runs through some 38 municipalities of the comarca, including Falset, Gratallops and Porrera, and receives tributaries such as the Montsant river and the Cortiella river.
Activity
Cornudella de Montsant's Festa Major d'Hivern is held in the town that is home to the castle of Siurana, the last Muslim stronghold in Catalonia, conquered in 1153.
Historical milestone
The fortress perched above the ravine was the last Andalusi stronghold in Catalonia, governed by the wali Almira Almemoniz and already surrounded after the fall of Tarragona, Tortosa and Lérida and the conquest of the Garrigues. The occupation of its lands began in 1153: the Cervera family advanced from the Conca de Barberà as far as Albarca, Albert de Castellvell invaded the Priorat through the coll de la Teixeta and Ramon de Ganagot through the coll d'Alforja, while Bertran de Castellet led the siege of the castle. The exact date of the surrender is not known with certainty, placed between April and November 1153 or, according to other sources, in July 1154. Its fall closed the conquest of the mountains of Prades and opened the resettlement of the comarca, an episode that gave rise to legends such as that of the Reina Mora.