Village
La Pobla de Benifassà is a municipality of El Baix Maestrat, in the province of Castellón, with 229 inhabitants, in a broken, mountainous landscape where the provinces of Castellón, Teruel and Tarragona meet, and where the río Cenia rises. The village was part of the Tenencia de Benifasar, seven localities subject to the abbot of the monastery, today occupied by Carthusian nuns of the Order of San Bruno, unique in Spain. Founded by Abbot Berenguer de Concavella with a founding charter in 1261, its territory contains the remains of the monastery of Santa María de Benifassà, built by monks from Poblet in 1233 and turned around 1250 into one of the great medieval Valencian ecclesiastical lordships. Its hamlet of Fredes, at 1,090 metres, is the northernmost inhabited settlement in the Valencian Community.
Monument
A Cistercian monastery founded by order of James I in 1233 on the model of Poblet, though on a smaller monumental scale, in the Tinença de Benifassà. The final works were not completed until 1250; the church, begun in 1264, with a single nave, transept and polygonal apse, was not finished until 1460, according to plans by the master builder Barceló de Vallibona. The main cloister mixes late Romanesque and Gothic styles, with paired columns and capitals decorated with plant motifs, rosettes and animals. The complex, built between the 13th and 16th centuries, is completed by the abbot's palace, chapter house, refectory and dormitories. Declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico Nacional (a former Spanish national heritage designation) in 1931, since 1967 it has been inhabited by a cloistered community of nuns of the Order of San Bruno; only the church may be visited.
Nature
The rock shelter, with Levantine rock art, is located near the Ulldecona reservoir, on the left bank of the río Cenia, in a bend just after the point where the reservoir's dam stands. It is at 460 metres above sea level, facing east-southeast, and measures 29 metres long, 3 high and 1.60 deep. At its foot a natural spring rises, the Font dels Rossegadors, and it overlooks a narrowing of the river now closed off by the dam, a location that offered its ancient occupants strategic advantages for hunting as well as a nearby water source.
Monument
A church of medieval origin in Fredes, the smallest inhabited hamlet in the province of Castellón, with a single nave, a raised choir and a modest bell tower set in the landscape of the Tinença de Benifassà.
Curiosity
An outlying village of barely thirty inhabitants at more than 1,000 metres above sea level in the far north of Castellón, with just two streets, a washing place and stone houses; it can be walked round in barely ten minutes.
Monument
The parish church of la Asunción de El Boixar stands in the upper part of the urban centre, within the Tinença de Benifassà. The present building was erected over an earlier temple, Romanesque and laid out in the manner typical of Reconquest-era churches; the new parish was begun in 1725 and blessed before 1730, although from the first temple, dating from the 14th century, the portal and the porch preceding it are preserved. After the bell tower collapsed, the current tower was built in 1862. It is a single-nave temple of ashlar masonry, with an academicist interior, coffered vaulting and side altars, bringing together diverse styles, from the Romanesque portal to a crowning typical of central Europe. In the presbytery, frescoes are preserved, possibly by Cruella, depicting the four evangelists.
Curiosity
The highest inhabited settlement in the Tinença de Benifassà, at 1,329 metres above sea level, set in completely mountainous country in the interior of the Baix Maestrat.
Monument
A small restored hamlet of traditional architecture and cobbled streets whose Romanesque church is notable for the figure of a Cistercian knight carved on its façade.
Nature
A waterfall some 30 metres high in the ravine of the same name, between the village of Fredes and the Ulldecona reservoir, at the source of the River Sénia within the Tinença de Benifassà Nature Park.
Historical milestone
James I handed over the castle and the valley to the abbot of Poblet to raise a Cistercian monastery, founded in 1233, the first founded in the Kingdom of Valencia; its lordship ordered the life of the villages of the Bergantes for centuries.