Village
Torrebaja is a municipality of El Rincón de Ademuz, in the province of Valencia, with 398 inhabitants (INE 2025), on the right bank of the Turia river, next to the mouth of the Ebrón. Documented in 1425 as a place of Moors under the names Villar de Orchet and Torre Hondonera, at a different site next to the present-day hermitage of San José, it was resettled as a manor by the Ruiz de Castellblanque family, who, after the expulsion of the moriscos (1609-1614), moved the hamlet to its present site, around the Casa Grande. In 1856 the owner divided her estate among tenant farmers and settlers. An air raid in 1938 killed civilians and soldiers and destroyed a good twenty buildings, and today the village dedicates a fair to the esperiega apple, the most prized variety of the comarca.
Activity
Torrebaja's patronal festival is in honour of San Isidro, on 15 May; the village also devotes a fair to the esperiega apple, the most prized variety of El Rincón de Ademuz.
Curiosity
The esperiega apple, also called espedriega, is a cultivar native to the Rincón de Ademuz that can also be found in nearby municipalities of Cuenca and Teruel. The exact origin of its name is unknown, although by resemblance it has been linked to the Hesperides, nymphs who protected fruit trees in Greek mythology. Its cultivation gained importance in the 1920s and 1930s. The esperiego apple tree is the last to blossom and the latest to be harvested; the cold of late October gives it its characteristic green, yellow and red colouring. Known as the ice apple for its ability to keep throughout the winter, it is the most prized variety in the comarca, used in traditional recipes, pastries, ciders and liqueurs.
Activity
The Esperiega Apple Fair is an annual celebration organised by the Tourist Association of the Rincón de Ademuz in tribute to this native variety, held on a rotating basis in the villages of the comarca since 2013, among them Torrebaja, which hosted it in 2016 and again for its tenth edition, on 15, 16 and 17 November 2024. It is organised around the main square and nearby streets, with an agri-food market and a craft market as its centrepiece, joined by cultural activities -talks, exhibitions, visits to monuments and natural sites-, festive and leisure events such as storytelling and music, and a gastronomic side with the Tapa Route, apple pie contests and popular dishes such as gachas de panizo or puchero de pueblo.
Monument
The keep of the Garcés de Marcilla forms part of the manor house of the same name, in the hamlet of Torrealta, in the municipality of Torrebaja (El Rincón de Ademuz, Valencia). The Garcés de Marcilla lineage held, from its origins, the small lordship of Torrealta, an exception to the Crown's direct rule over these lands since the 13th century. After the abolition of lordships during the Liberal Triennium, the property passed to the Baron of Andilla, who in the early 20th century gave the Casa Grande and the keep to his administrator Manuel Roselló Adalid, whose descendants are the owners today. The building consists of the dwelling, with a round-arched doorway, and the keep, rectangular in plan with brick walls over four levels, which preserves remains of the defensive hoarding.
Monument
The Casa Señorial of the Ruiz de Castelblanque is a fortified residential building standing on the Town Hall square of Torrebaja, a municipality in the comarca of the Rincón de Ademuz, at the western end of the province of Valencia, on the banks of the river Turia. It is listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) with code 46.09.242-008.
Monument
The parish church of Torrebaja, whose Latin foundation title is Sanctae Marinae Virginis, stands at the confluence of Calle del Rosario with Plaza de la Iglesia and the small square Rey Don Jaime, known as La Replaceta. The present temple, built of brick and ashlar with a slender bell tower, was rebuilt in the 1950s, from 1954 onward, to a design by the architect Luis Gay Ramos. It replaced an earlier Baroque church from the 1660s, which had to be demolished following damage from Civil War bombing and the subsidence caused by the air-raid shelters dug beneath its floor. It preserves two bells from that earlier temple: the larger, dedicated to Santa Marina, cast in 1914, and one dedicated to Santiago Apóstol. The interior, spacious and bright, has three naves with several side chapels.
Monument
The Ermita de San Roque stands in the Los Pajares quarter of Torrebaja, in the upper part of the village, with the hamlet and the Turia vega at its feet. Listed as a Bien de Relevancia Local (a heritage protection designation for assets of local significance in the Valencian Community), the earliest record of it dates from the mid-17th century, when the bishop of Segorbe, Francisco Gavaldá Guasch, mentions three hermitages in the place. Tradition recorded by Pascual Madoz in 1847 attributes to James the Conqueror the placing, in front of the building, of three triangular stone pillars, within which those fleeing persecution by the law were granted pardon. During the First Carlist War, when Castielfabib was left without a church, its residents came to this hermitage to hear Mass. It is a freestanding building, with a covered porch at the entrance with a three-sided roof.
Monument
The Ermita de San José, in the Los Villares district north of Torrebaja, next to the Camino de Las Vueltas leading to Ademuz, is listed as a Bien de Relevancia Local (a heritage protection designation for assets of local significance in the Valencian Community). Documented since the mid-16th century, its first mention by name appears in the 1638 will of Diego Ruiz de Castellblanch, lord of Torrebaja. It gives its name to the site of Los Villares, linked to an ancient settlement awaiting archaeological study. Squat in construction, with side buttresses, it has an Arabic-tile roof with four slopes and a modest brick bell-gable with a small bell; the bell, dedicated to Jesús, María and José, bears the inscription “IHS María Joseph/1750ca”. It is reached by crossing the Río Ebrón and passing by the old Molino de San José, from 1887.
Monument
A Baroque tower of the 17th-18th centuries belonging to a manor house in Torrebaja. It is a quadrangular turret annexed to the Casa Grande of the local entailed estate, crowned by pyramidal and lance-shaped structures resting on its high cornices, a finial typical of many Baroque civil and religious buildings of the period. Its elegant silhouette forms an emblem for Torrebaja and gives its name to the town itself. The building is privately owned.
Monument
The church of Santa Ana, in the settlement of Torrealta (Torrebaja, Rincón de Ademuz), is a 16th-century Gothic-Mudéjar building with Renaissance additions, documented since the first decades of that century. It was the parish church of the seigneury of Torrealta, held by the Garcés de Marcilla family, whose coat of arms surrounds the central keystone of the starred Gothic vault of the chancel, the most elaborate part of the temple. The nave, on a single level with three side chapels and a choir loft at the foot, is covered by a barrel vault, and the plain façade is topped by a carved stone bell-gable. The temple lost its images and its archive during the Civil War, and between 2014 and 2018 it was restored by students of the Universidad de Valencia.
Historical milestone
Documented in 1425 as a place of Moors, the village was left empty with the expulsion and the Ruiz de Castellblanque family resettled it as a lordship, moving the township to the site it occupies today.
Historical milestone
The owner Juana Casaus de Castellblanque wound up her estate in 1856, sharing it out among tenants and colonists, a change that turned the former vassals into owners of the land they worked.
Historical milestone
An air raid killed civilians and soldiers in 1938, destroyed well over twenty buildings and seriously damaged the parish church; it was the harshest episode of the Civil War in this remote corner. The bombing, carried out by the aviation of the rebel side on 26 November 1938, resulted in nine civilian deaths, an undetermined number of wounded and military casualties, and the total or partial destruction of twenty-four dwellings. Torrebaja at the time housed the General Staff of the XIX Army Corps of the Army of the Levante, with offices, a signals service, quartermaster warehouses, troop lodging and a Blood Hospital, which explains the interest of the Francoist air force in this town, located next to the road from Cuenca to Teruel.
Food and drink
A stew of chickpeas, vegetables and meats cooked slowly for hours, the Sunday dish of the Turia lowlands; it is accompanied by roast lamb and, for dessert, sweets made with the fruit of the valley.