Village
Alpuente is a municipality of the comarca of Los Serranos, in the northwest of the province of Valencia, next to the border with Teruel and south of the sierra de Javalambre, of Morisco origin and former seat of the Taifa of Alpuente. Its rugged municipal area, with mountains such as la Muela (1,511 m) and numerous ravines, among them those of the Reguero and Arquela, which feed the Tuéjar river, preserves settlement remains from the Bronze Age and the Iberian period, such as Los Castillejos, near the hamlet of La Cuevarruz. It gained particular importance in the Muslim period, when the castle of Alpuente presided over the walled town and controlled, together with the castle of Poyo, the Camino Real linking Valencia with Aragón and Castile, after the disintegration of the Caliphate of Córdoba from 1009 onward. It has 688 inhabitants.
Curiosity
The Taifa of Alpuente, or Al-Būnt, existed during the 11th century, arising in 1009 after the fitna that fragmented the Caliphate of Córdoba following Muhammad II al-Mahdi's overthrow of Caliph Hisham II. It was established in the present-day municipality of Alpuente, today in the comarca of Los Serranos, out of an earlier Berber settlement of the Kutama tribe, the Banu Qasim, who ruled the taifa as kings from 1009 until they were conquered by the Almoravids between 1104 and 1107. Even before the taifa, in the era of Muslim rule, Alpuente was part of what was called the Upper March (Frontera Superior) of Al-Andalus, under the lordship of this same family, the Banu Qasim, descendants of Abd al-Malik, of the tribe of Quraysh although not originally from Mecca.
Activity
Alpuente honours its patron saints, San Blas and the Virgen de la Consolación, on 3 February with the handing out of blessed oranges; the Virgin's main festival, with her image brought from the ermita de Corcolilla, is held only every three years.
Monument
The Los Arcos aqueduct, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2005, is a hydraulic infrastructure built between the 16th and 17th centuries to carry to Alpuente the water of the Nueva and Marimacho springs, intended for irrigation, consumption and the town's wash-houses. It forms part of a larger system together with the springs' catchment and the Acequia Madre, excavated over some 230 metres up to the aqueduct itself, which crosses the difference in height of the río Reguero with a masonry arcade of straight layout and 265 metres in length. It is located 2.5 kilometres north of the town, on the road towards La Yesa. In the 1970s part of the channel was piped underground; it now feeds the fountain of the Purísima.
Monument
The Torre Aljama of Alpuente housed on its ground floor the hall where the Cortes of the Kingdom of Valencia met in 1319 and 1383. Over the centuries, the building came to house the town's council hall, a function it retained until 2012.
Monument
The Paleontological Museum of Alpuente brings together dinosaur fossils from Jurassic and Cretaceous sites in the Los Serranos district (Valencia), whose excavations began in the 1970s and were resumed annually from 1997 onwards by the University of Valencia, with finds of three large sauropods and other herbivores, as well as six ichnite sites declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection). The museum, open to the public since 2006 and inaugurated in 2008, occupies the former hermitage of Santa Bárbara, built in 1376 and rebuilt in 1703, in the town centre of Alpuente; it consists of a single rectangular nave in four bays with a barrel vault. It is the only museum in Europe to hold the Rural Quality certificate of the Leader programme.
Nature
The Special Protection Area for Birds Alto Turia y Sierra del Negrete, reference ES0000449, was declared in 2009 as part of the expansion of the Comunitat Valenciana's SPA network, and includes the Sabinar de Alpuente and the Alto del Viso micro-reserve, in the Los Serranos district. It partly coincides with three former Sites of Community Importance: Alto Turia, with gallery forests and steep rocky outcrops; Sabinar de Alpuente, with formations of Spanish juniper, Scots pine and creeping savin juniper; and Sierra del Negrete, with continental holm-oak woods, black pine and mixed quejigo oak woods. It is part of the European ecological network Natura 2000.
Nature
Summit of 1,511 metres in the municipal district of Alpuente, within the comarca of Los Serranos.
Curiosity
Alpuente was the capital of a jurisdiction (alcaldía) that governed, besides its own territory, those of Aras de los Olmos, Titaguas and La Yesa, from approximately 1238 until 1707. Its location on the obligatory passage and border between the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile gave it notable strategic and commercial importance within the medieval organisation of the Crown of Aragon. The jurisdiction ended with the Nueva Planta Decree of 1707, which abolished the fueros after the War of the Spanish Succession and transferred the management of the Real Hacienda to a new office, the intendant, within the new centralised Bourbon administration.
Activity
The Bajada de la Virgen de la Consolación of Alpuente is a triennial procession, in honour of an image found in 1614, celebrated in the months of May and August. It consists of the transfer of the Virgin from the hermitage of Corcolilla to the village, accompanied by secular and religious festivities. During the route, the so-called dichos are recited, verses of supplication and thanks to the image, a tradition unique to Alpuente.
Activity
The festivities of Alpuente in honour of Saint Blaise are celebrated every year on 3 February, with the traditional distribution of blessed oranges among residents and visitors of the town.
Historical milestone
The Cortes of the Kingdom of Valencia met twice, in 1319 and 1383, in this mountain town, an unusual honor for an inland settlement that had been a taifa capital and kept political weight on the frontier with Aragon.
Historical milestone
General Azpiroz laid siege to the fortress and took it in the final weeks of the First Carlist War; in 1875, during the Third, the liberal artillery ended up destroying the castle of el Poyo.
Food and drink
Meats from the pig slaughter fried and preserved in earthenware jars under their own fat, which made it possible to eat pork all year round; with them the olla de pueblo, the gazpachos and the porridges of the sierra are enriched.