Village
Cocentaina is the capital of the comarca of El Comtat, in the province of Alicante, between the Sierra de Mariola and the Serpis river, with 11,498 inhabitants (INE 2025) and a marked historic quarter of Muslim origin. A good part of its municipal area lies within the Sierra de Mariola natural park, where three shelters with schematic rock art are preserved, those of Alberri, la Paella and Penya Banyà, declared World Heritage in 1998. Under Muslim rule, the former Qustantaniya was a notable economic, agricultural and military enclave, with a suburb, castle and farmsteads. James I of Aragon conquered the town in 1245, a period marked by the revolts of Al-Azraq; in 1304 it was sacked and burned by Muslims from Granada, the origin of its residents' nickname, the Socarrats.
Monument
The Castle of Cocentaina is a military Gothic-style fortress built in the 14th century atop Mount Sant Cristòfol, within the Sierra de Mariola, from where it overlooks the comarcas of L'Alcoià and El Comtat. It was built over the remains of 10th- and 11th-century Muslim defensive structures, and was the first military target in the mid-13th-century Muslim uprisings; in the 1303 revolt it was burned and destroyed. It preserves remains of its walls, though what stands out most is the solid main tower, square in plan and Gothic in style, with two floors connected by a cistern. Recently restored, it houses inside a display of archaeological finds from the area and is one of the city's most representative symbols.
Monument
The former palace of the counts of Cocentaina, one of the main historic buildings in the city's old town. It is a civil building in Gothic-Renaissance style, built over a former 12th-century Muslim building; the first Gothic building was raised in the second half of the 13th century by Admiral Roger de Lauria, first feudal lord of the town, as the alcázar of his residence. After acquiring the title of counts in 1448, the Corella family remodelled and enlarged it in the 15th century. Today it houses a campus of the University of Alicante devoted to specialised seasonal courses.
Curiosity
The old town of Cocentaina preserves a pronounced urban layout of Muslim origin, with narrow streets typical of the period. Its core is the Raval, a former Arab quarter that keeps its original layout almost intact: it was built around a large mosque, today the church of El Salvador, and its winding streets and closed alleys form a labyrinthine network typical of medieval Islamic town planning. In Muslim times, when the city was called Qustantaniya, it was an important centre economically, agriculturally, militarily and administratively, a status also reflected in the castle that crowns the town.
Activity
The Fira de Tots Sants de Cocentaina was created in 1346 by royal privilege of Pedro III granted to the Count of Cocentaina, Roger de Lauria, which makes it the second-oldest fair in Spain. It is held every year during All Saints' week and draws more than 650,000 visitors to an exhibition area of 70,000 square metres. Its stalls are spread across different zones: the agricultural machinery zone, which today occupies the central area with cars, trucks and agricultural and construction machinery, as well as the Arab souk, the medieval market, the Valencian porrat, the Jewish quarter, the children's fairground and the animal exhibition.
Curiosity
The cooking of Cocentaina includes dishes such as olleta, borreta and rice with rabbit, and is notable for its own liqueurs, herbero and café licor, made with aromatic herbs from the Serra de Mariola.
Monument
The church of Santa María, in the historic centre of Cocentaina, was founded in the 13th century, rebuilt in the 16th and reconstructed in Baroque style in 1666, with further reforms and extensions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Together with the church of El Salvador it forms part of the medieval and Renaissance religious complex of the county town. It has a single nave of five bays covered by a barrel vault, side chapels between buttresses and a dome over the transept with a perimeter gallery in the Baroque manner. In the sanctuary, a trompe-l'oeil fresco depicts the Assumption of the Virgin beneath a feigned architecture. On the outside it has two stone doorways, one classical and one Baroque, and a five-tier bell tower topped with pinnacles and acanthus leaves.
Monument
The church of El Salvador, one of the two great historic parishes of Cocentaina, was built in the second half of the 16th century on the former mosque, in the municipality's urban layout of Muslim origin. It is a Renaissance temple with a single nave and four bays, with chapels between buttresses, over which Baroque figures and gilding were later superimposed. The sanctuary, lower than the nave, is covered by a sail vault and an arch with the apostles painted in tondi. In the 18th century the Chapel of the Communion was added, with a vaulted plan and a dome on pendentives, which gave rise to the two asymmetrical doorways of the main façade. Inside, 18th-century tiles and 17th-century paintings by Nicolau Borràs and Francesc Ribalta are preserved.
Monument
These streets in the old town preserve remains of the 13th-century Christian walls and 18th-century ceramic panels on their façades.
Curiosity
Admiral Roger de Llúria, first baron of Cocentaina, built the alcàsser on which the Palacio Condal was later raised, and obtained from King Peter the Ceremonious the privilege of holding the Fira de Tots Sants in 1346.
Activity
A waymarked route of about 4.5 kilometres and an hour and three quarters' walking that takes in the historical heritage of the lands of El Comtat around the Serra de Mariola.
Historical milestone
The municipal archive preserves the books of the Cort del Justícia begun in 1269, the oldest judicial series preserved from the kingdom of Valencia. They record lawsuits, debts and complaints from Christians, Muslims and Jews, and are a basic source on medieval daily life.
Historical milestone
In 1304 an expedition from the kingdom of Granada sacked and burned the town. From the fire that razed the houses comes the nickname socarrats by which the residents are still known, recalled every year in the events of the patron saint festivities.
Historical milestone
Alfonso the Magnanimous sold the town in 1448 to Ximén Pérez de Corella for eighty thousand florins and granted him the title of count, from which the comarca takes its name. The Corella raised the seigneurial palace and governed the valley for almost two centuries.
Historical milestone
According to the testimonies gathered at the time, in 1620 the image of the Virgen del Milagro shed tears before several residents. The devotion that followed led to the founding of the monastery of Poor Clares that guards the carving and to the establishment of the festivity held in April.
Food and drink
Red peppers hollowed out and stuffed with raw rice, tomato, garlic and pieces of salt cod or meat, then baked in the oven in a clay pot. The pepper releases its juice during cooking, leaving the rice moist and stained red. In standard Valencian they are called pimentons farcits, although local tradition prefers bajoques farcides, the name used in these comarcas for the pepper. The dish, typical of the central Valencian comarcas and with strong roots around Alcoy, was part of the everyday diet of peasant and working families, above all in times of scarcity. Oral tradition tells that many women would leave the tray ready in the morning in the household's bread oven, so that the residual heat would finish the cooking while they worked at the factory.