Village
Vilafranca, officially Villafranca del Cid, is a municipality in the comarca of Els Ports, on the western border of the province of Castellón, situated on a plateau at 1,125 m of altitude, the most populous in the comarca after Morella. The rest of its territory is very rugged, with heights exceeding 1,600 m, such as the Tossal dels Montllats, and limestone formations shaped by erosion, such as the caves of Forcall. Its climate has long, cold winters, with frequent frosts between November and May, and mild summers that rarely exceed 20 °C, with an average annual temperature of only 10 °C and about 700 litres of rainfall a year, mostly in autumn and spring. It borders towns in Castellón and Teruel, such as Ares del Maestre. It has 2,115 inhabitants (INE 2025).
Activity
Vilafranca celebrates its patronal festival from 15 August in honour of San Roque, with nine days of fireball-horned bulls and bullfights, and the festival of the Virgen del Llosar on 8 September, with a procession to the sanctuary. It also celebrates San Antonio Abad with the traditional Publicata.
Curiosity
The masía, the traditional dwelling and farming holding of medieval origin, spread across Els Ports with the arrival of Aragonese and Catalan settlers in the 13th and 14th centuries; for centuries its 'masovers' have been the great custodians of the comarca's ethnological heritage.
Monument
The church of Santa Magdalena de Vilafranca, in Renaissance style, was built between 1567 and 1572, well into the sixteenth century, on the site of the earlier temple, to a design by Pere Maseres completed by Ramón de Pertusa; it is one of the earliest expressions of the new Renaissance idiom in northern Valencia. In the following centuries the transagrario (1667-1670), the Chapel of the Communion (1725-1735) and, later still, in 1908-1911, the bell tower, the work of Francisco Tomás Traver, were added. Rectangular in plan, with four side chapels and an octagonal apse, its nave is covered by a ribbed vault with tiercerons, while the apse displays a star vault. Above the sacristy rises the crenellated tower known as de Conjurar, restored in 2007, and in 2008 the main façade was restored.
Monument
The hermitage of San Miguel de Vilafranca, in Romanesque-Gothic style and dating from the late thirteenth century, stands in the area of the riu de les Truites, the original site where the settlement was born before moving, towards that same century, to the raised plateau occupied by today's town centre. It houses an altarpiece from 1429, the work of Bernat Serra, one of the most notable Valencian Gothic ensembles in the Els Ports district. It is listed as a Bien Inmueble de Relevancia Local (a local-level heritage designation, below BIC).
Monument
The hermitage of the Virgen del Llosar stands 1.5 km from Vilafranca, on the road towards Iglesuela del Cid, where tradition places the discovery of an image of the Virgin by a peasant who was ploughing the land. The present sanctuary was built over a small fourteenth-century hermitage, rebuilt between 1663 and 1683, by then in the seventeenth century, by Juan Ibáñez and his disciples; the hospedería (guesthouse) was finished in 1734, the camarín (shrine chamber) was begun in 1758, and the semi-porticoed square in front of the façade was added between 1845 and 1848, well into the nineteenth century. The complex, with a cloister-like plan of three naves and eight side chapels, houses in its camarín a Baroque altarpiece of curving lines. Two pilgrimages are held: a penitential one on the octave of Pentecost, and another, with a procession and a solemn Mass, on 8 September, at which the mayorales hand out milk and pastries.
Monument
Late 13th-century Gothic bridge over the River Monleón, in the municipal district of Vilafranca.
Monument
The Portal de San Roque, in the historic centre of Vilafranca (Els Ports, Castellón), is a fourteenth-century gate and the only surviving stretch of the wall built during the reign of Peter IV. It stood opposite the village's old hospital, now gone.
Monument
The medieval oven of Vilafranca, in the Els Ports district, was built in the late thirteenth century and was granted by King Peter IV in 1358 to the physician Pedro Ros, as payment for his services during an epidemic of the Black Death. In 1691, the year Vilafranca became independent from Morella, it passed into the hands of the council, and during the disentailment (desamortización) of 1860 it became private property. Today it belongs to the Vilatur Coop V cooperative, which restored it as a multipurpose space for its members' events; it can be visited by checking with the local tourist office.
Nature
At 1,656 metres in altitude, the Tossal dels Montllats —also called Moleta del Tossal— is the highest peak in the Els Ports de Morella district and rises on the boundary between the municipalities of Vilafranca and Mosqueruela (Teruel). Its surroundings combine Scots pine and holm oak woods with mountain meadows and the abandoned farmland of the Pla de Montllats, where the mas (farmhouse) of the same name is preserved. The limestone rocks of the municipality, shaped by karst dissolution, have given rise to the Les Coves del Forcall formations, near the mountain.
Curiosity
Vilafranca preserves seven fortified masías declared Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), evidence of the rural defensive architecture of the Els Ports district: the Mas de Roig, the Torre Don Blasco, the Torre Fonso, the Torre Leandra, the Mas Tena, the Torre Barreda and the Torre de la Pobla del Bellestar. These buildings, scattered across the municipal area, form an unusual group within Valencian rural architecture, originally designed to defend isolated farmsteads against raids and banditry in a district on the border between kingdoms.
Activity
Vilafranca's patronal festivities (Els Ports, Castellón) begin on 15 August in honour of San Roque and last nine days, with a programme combining exhibitions, theatre, various championships, orchestras and concerts alongside the traditional bull-related festivities, among them toros embolados (bulls with flaming balls on their horns) and bullfights.
Activity
The feast of the Virgen del Llosar, in Vilafranca (Els Ports, Castellón), is the town's most important religious festival and is held on 8 September with toros embolados and traditional pumpkin sweets. That day the people of Vilafranca go up in pilgrimage to the hermitage of El Llosar, where the typical pastissos are handed out. In spring, at Easter, the Pasqua Llosar is also held, another pilgrimage to the same sanctuary at which milk is given out.
Historical milestone
Blasco de Alagón granted a settlement charter to the place then called Rivus Truitarum, the river of the trout; in time the town litigated with Morella until it obtained its definitive independence in 1691.