Village
Yecla is a city in the Región de Murcia, at the region's far northeastern edge, on the border with Alicante and Albacete, and capital of the Altiplano comarca, which it forms together with Jumilla. Its name comes from the Arabic Yakka, the fortress raised on what is now Castillo hill, although the toponym has pre-Roman roots. The first stable settlement, Hisn Yakka, arose in the late 11th century under Almoravid rule, and in the early 13th century it became the centre of a rural district belonging to the term of Villena. The landscape is dominated by moderate-altitude sierras, such as the Sierra de Salinas, which rises above 1,200 metres, covered with pine forests and scrubland under a dry Mediterranean climate. With around 36,000 inhabitants, Yecla is known for its furniture industry and its wines, with its own designation of origin since 1972.
Monument
Fortress of Muslim origin from the 10th and 11th centuries in Yecla, with the shrine of the city's patron saint inside it.
Monument
Neoclassical basilica in Yecla built between 1775 and 1868, with a Latin-cross floor plan and three naves separated by semicircular arches. Dedicated to the Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora, patron saint of the town and popularly known as the Virgen del Castillo, it houses her venerated image when it leaves the Santuario del Castillo for the Fiestas de la Virgen (the Virgin's festivities), in December. Also called the New Church, opposite the Old Church or Church of the Saviour, it stands out for the spiral-decorated dome over the crossing, covered in blue-and-white glazed tile, a symbol of the city, and for a Neo-Mudéjar tower on the north-east corner. It preserves mural paintings by Manuel Muñoz Barberán and numerous Holy Week images, among them works by Francisco Salzillo.
Monument
Historic ensemble in Yecla made up of the 16th-century Renaissance town hall, the Casa de los Alarcos, the Lonja, the Clock Tower and the Pósito building.
Monument
The Teatro Concha Segura, on Plaza Parque de la Constitución in Yecla, was built in 1886 to a design by Francisco Albiñana Sánchez, with decoration by the painter Juan Albert Seva, on the site of the old Panera del Pósito house, and was inaugurated that year with the comedy El sobrino de su tío. Its façade was remodelled in 1890 by the architect Justo Millán Espinosa, and in 1899, following that renovation, it took the name Concha Segura in honour of the Yecla-born actress María Concepción Bienvenida Segura Roselló, who was born in the building itself when it still served as a warehouse and makeshift residence. Its horseshoe-plan interior preserves a ceiling painted by Manuel Muñoz Barberán, and in 1907 the hall was also adapted for film screenings and variety shows.
Nature
Monte Arabí, at 1,068 metres above sea level, is a hill in Yecla declared a Monumento Natural (Spain's protection status for natural areas of outstanding value) in 2016 for its archaeological, biological and geological richness. On its slopes there are remains from the 2nd millennium BC through to Romanisation: on the neighbouring Arabilejo, the ruins of a walled Bronze Age settlement, and at its foot more than fifty groups of petroglyphs. Its most valuable treasure is the paintings in the Cantos de la Visera and Mediodía rock shelters, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998: naturalistic Levantine art, with horses, bovids, goats and deer in red, and later schematic art with serpent-like figures and eyed idols. Two kilometres away, in Montealegre del Castillo, lies the Iberian site of the cerro de los Santos, where the Gran Dama Oferente was found.
Curiosity
The Archaeological Museum of Yecla, organised into four thematic areas, devotes its Iberian culture section, rooms 5 to 8, to the protohistoric and Iberian site of the Cerro de los Santos. It holds 51 of the roughly 400 sculptures found at the sanctuary, considered one of the most important Iberian cult centres in the south-east of the peninsula. The collection comes from the antiquities cabinet of the Escuelas Pías of Yecla, dating from 1870, and from the excavations carried out there by the Piarist priest Carlos Lasalde Nombela between 1870 and 1871; part of the collection was exhibited at the 1873 Vienna World's Fair, including the celebrated Dama Oferente, now in the National Archaeological Museum.
Monument
Yecla's oldest church, built in the mid-14th century in thanksgiving to the saint after a plague epidemic. It preserves a double-pitched Mudéjar coffered ceiling from the early 16th century. It was declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (Spain's heritage designation in force between 1931 and 1985) of local interest by order of 23rd December 1981 (BOE).
Monument
Museum in Yecla devoted to the objects and regalia associated with the Virgen del Castillo and the town's patron saint festivities. This regalia includes items such as a processional float, a valuable gold crown set with precious stones and a blue mantle hand-embroidered in gold thread, commissioned in the 19th century at the instigation of prominent local figures and with municipal support, as an enhancement of the Virgin's festivities.
Activity
Yecla has hosted Spain's first furniture fair since 1962, the oldest in the sector in the country and, since 2013, the only one in all of Spain dedicated exclusively to furniture; each edition brings together around 120 exhibitors, with companies coming from several countries. The furniture industry emerged in the mid-20th century, when the town's cooper and carpenter craftsmen turned to this trade, which became Yecla's main economic driver, with more than 400 companies engaged in furniture and upholstery manufacturing.
Activity
Yecla's (Murcia) patron saint festivities are held in December in honour of the Purísima Concepción, popularly venerated as the Virgen del Castillo and patron saint of the town. During the festivities, the image leaves its Santuario del Castillo to be carried to the Basílica de la Purísima, an archpriestal church built between 1775 and 1868, also known as the New Church. The festivities are declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Regional (an official regional-level tourism recognition in Spain).
Monument
A great architectural emblem of Yecla, built between 1775 and 1868 blending Neoclassical and Neo-Mudéjar styles, crowned by a blue-and-white dome visible from much of the municipality. Ranking as an archpriestal church, it is dedicated to the Purísima Concepción, patron saint of the town, popularly known as the Virgen del Castillo; it is also called the New Church, in contrast to the Church of the Saviour or Old Church, and it is here that the patron saint's image is carried when it leaves the Santuario del Castillo for the Fiestas de la Virgen, in December. Its Neo-Mudéjar tower on the north-east corner is topped by an octagonal bell chamber. It preserves mural paintings by Manuel Muñoz Barberán and numerous Holy Week pasos (processional floats) by artists such as Miguel Torregrosa and Francisco Salzillo.
Monument
A Gothic-Renaissance church built for the most part in 1512 and consecrated in 1540, with a 35-metre tower divided into four sections. Burned and looted in 1936, now deconsecrated, it functions as a cultural space and museum. It was also known as the church or rectory of the Salvador, and, unlike what is usual in long-built churches, work began with the nave rather than the apse, where the main altar and sacristy were normally located. Its Renaissance tower was modelled on that of the archpriestal Church of Santiago in Villena. Looted and burned on 16 March 1936, it remained in ruins until, in the mid-1980s, the Diocese of Cartagena transferred its ownership for a limited time to the Yecla town council, which undertook a major restoration.
Monument
On top of the Cerro del Castillo stands the shrine of the Virgen del Castillo, beside the remains of the old Islamic fortified settlement of Hisn Yakka, from the 11th century, recently opened to visitors with walkways and interpretation panels.
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Renaissance building of the mid-16th century, originally a wheat trading house attached to the tower, incorporated into the town hall in 1687 and preserving the first coat of arms of Yecla, carved in the time of Carlos II.
Monument
Renaissance building from the early 16th century with a double-arcaded façade and wrought-iron balconies, among which the imperial coat of arms of Charles V can be seen. It presides over the Plaza Mayor of Yecla, the heart of the historic quarter, forming part of a Renaissance and Baroque monumental ensemble where much of the town's civic heritage is concentrated.
Monument
Building of the 16th and 17th centuries on the Plaza Mayor of Yecla which, together with the old Pósito, the Lonja and the Clock Tower, forms the Renaissance and baroque monumental ensemble of the old town.
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Buildings of the 16th and 17th centuries used historically for storing grain and for trade, part of the monumental ensemble of Yecla's Plaza Mayor alongside the Palacio del Concejo.
Monument
Housed in the Palacio de los Ortega, it has five hundred square metres of permanent display arranged in four areas: Monte Arabí (Prehistory), Cerro de los Santos (Protohistory), Los Torrejones (Romanisation) and Cerro del Castillo (Middle Ages).
Monument
Museum in the Casa Municipal de Cultura bringing together 73 replicas of works by El Greco painted by the Yecla artist Juan Albert Roses, who travelled for twenty years to the original locations of each painting in order to reproduce them faithfully.
Monument
Group of shelters with Levantine rock art, among them the Abrigo del Mediodía and the Cantos de la Visera, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 as part of the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula.
Nature
Cavity formed by water and wind erosion in the limestone of Monte Arabí, with a distinctive opening at its far end, which holds some of the protected rock paintings of the area.
Monument
Yecla pedanía that preserves Iberian remains and one of the five Roman rural villas documented in the municipal district, evidence of the Romanisation of the Altiplano.
Curiosity
Raspay, the only outlying hamlet of Yecla, lies in the Sierra de las Pansas, a spur of the Sierra del Carche, 23 kilometres south of the municipal capital and about 70 kilometres north of Murcia, on the border with the province of Alicante. It emerged in the late 19th century around rice farming, and its population, bilingual in Valencian and Spanish, grew with workers who arrived from Valencian-speaking towns such as Pinoso or Monóvar, drawn by the valley's land. Despite having just over a hundred inhabitants, people of some fifteen different nationalities live together in Raspay. Among its notable spots are the Zurriera cave, the Jaime el Barbudo cave and the Pansas fountain.
Curiosity
Yecla's furniture-making tradition goes back to the early 20th century and took hold in the 1960s and 1970s with the first factories, set up by Pedro Chinchilla Candela and Rafael Azorín Fernández. Today the furniture industry is the municipality's main economic activity.
Curiosity
The novelist, journalist and biographer José Luis Castillo-Puche was born in Yecla in 1919. He won the Premio Nacional de Narrativa twice (1954 and 1982) and was an honorary member of the Hemingway Society in the United States.
Curiosity
The first part of 'La Voluntad' (1902), the novel that made the writer José Martínez Ruiz 'Azorín' famous and with which he began to use that pen name, is set in Yecla, portrayed as a symbol of traditional, unchanging Spain.
Activity
Declared a Festival of National Tourist Interest, it commemorates the return without a single loss of the 61 Yecla soldiers recruited in 1642 during the Catalan war. It includes the Alborada with harquebus salvoes, the gachasmigas meal, the Bringing Down of the Virgin and the Floral Offering.
Activity
Celebration of deep popular roots in the city, with traditional processions that make their way through Yecla's historic centre in the days before Easter, organised by the various local brotherhoods and confraternities.
Activity
Trade fair born in 1961 as the 'First Local Furniture Fair' with 18 exhibitors, which has become a leading annual event for the Spanish furniture sector and an emblem of Yecla's economic identity.
Monument
Temple in Yecla that houses the chapel of the Virgen de las Angustias, of the eighteenth century and considered a jewel of Levantine Baroque, with a Rococo camarín of tilework and Solomonic columns; after remaining closed for 42 years, it reopened in 2014 as an iconographic museum devoted to Yecla's Holy Week.
Curiosity
Hisn Yakka was the Andalusi stronghold at the origin of present-day Yecla (Altiplano, Murcia). It arose at the end of the 11th century, in the Almoravid period, probably to extend Muslim power in the area, and was established on the present-day Cerro del Castillo, which overlooks the city today. It experienced its moment of greatest splendour in the early 13th century, when it became the centre of a rural district. After the Mudejar revolt of 1264-1266, the Muslim population was displaced and the original settlement was left without permanent occupation; Christians later settled on the north face of the same hill. The place name Yakka comes from Arabic, although it could have older pre-Roman roots.
Curiosity
Raspay is a southern hamlet of Yecla located in the Sierra de las Pansas, in the district of El Carche, within the Murcian Altiplano, about 23 kilometres south of the town centre and at 730 metres above sea level. It had 121 inhabitants in 2022, down from 147 in the year 2000. Valencian arrived in the 19th century with workers from Pinoso and Monóvar, drawn by the valley's farm work, and today coexists with Spanish. Permanent settlement began in 1855 with the arrival of the first rector, the Almansa-born priest Antonio Ibáñez Galiano. Its festivities, at the end of June, honour the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sweet Heart of Mary, and among its landmarks are the Zurriera and Jaime el Barbudo caves and the Fuente de las Pansas.
Activity
Festivities of Yecla (Region of Murcia) held in mid-May, on the weekend closest to the feast of San Isidro, which were declared of National Tourist Interest in 2021. Their origin dates back to 1816, when a company was created for the lighting of the waters next to the Cerrico de la Fuente that adopted the invocation of the saint; the original image was lost during the Civil War and was replaced in 1945, giving way to the first modern procession. The most notable event is the Cabalgata de Carrozas, added from 1949 onward, in which numerous peñas parade through the streets floats several metres long decorated with papelicos of tissue paper and motifs relating to farming or to Yecla, competing for the prize for the best design.
Monument
Late nineteenth-century temple in Yecla, of geometric Byzantine style with a central bell tower, designed by the architect Justo Millán Espinosa, who also remodelled the Teatro Concha Segura in 1890; it preserves an altarpiece of 1981 by Rafael Roses Ribadavia.
Monument
The church of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, popularly known as El Hospitalico, is part of a complex that originates in a hospital founded around 1534-1550, to which the church preserved today was added in the second half of the 18th century; in 1794 an adjoining Casa de Misericordia was also established, remodelled in later periods. It is located in the historic centre of Yecla, between the streets of Hospital and Jabonería and the Placeta Ortega, at the point of connection between the medieval core, situated on high ground, and the early modern outskirts. The complex was declared a national historic-artistic monument by Royal Decree of 15 December 1982, based on a 1981 report by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.
Monument
A set of two rock shelters with cave paintings of the Mediterranean Basin arc style located at the Monte Arabí site in Yecla, included in the UNESCO World Heritage declaration since 1998 under the name Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. Discovered in 1912, the two shelters, about fifteen metres apart, lie on rock blocks fallen from the eastern cliff face of the mountain, some 800 metres from the paintings of the Abrigo del Mediodía, and are in naturalistic style, some 7,000 years old. The first shows about 40 animal figures -deer, equids, caprids and bovids- in a reddish tone; the second, some sixty figures, mostly human, along with bovids and deer, with motifs of the more recent schematic style superimposed, such as a crane in dance.
Nature
A rock shelter with cave paintings of schematic art discovered in 1912, located on the eastern cliff face of Mount Arabí, in Yecla, about 800 metres from the paintings of the Cantos de la Visera. The depictions include anthropomorphic figures, plant and animal elements, and zigzag lines, and form part, together with the rest of the Mediterranean Basin rock-art complex, of the assets declared World Heritage by UNESCO.
Nature
Archaeological site of Roman date located in the district of Yecla, testimony to the occupation of the Altiplano territory during Antiquity, with evidence of pre-Islamic settlement in the region.
Monument
A commemorative arch in Yecla raised in memory of the visit of the Catholic Monarchs to the town, in the monumental setting of the Plaza Mayor.
Curiosity
A professional tennis player born in Yecla in 1982, a doubles specialist, who reached world number 4 in that discipline in 2010, won the WTA doubles Masters in 2009 and played three Wimbledon finals during her career.
Historical milestone
The infante Alfonso, the future Alfonso X, occupied the stronghold of Yecla in 1243 within the Castilian protectorate over the kingdom of Murcia; the town was afterwards integrated into the lordship of don Manuel and then knew its first Christian expansion.
Historical milestone
In 1280 the infante don Manuel, brother of Alfonso X, granted a settlement charter to Yecla at the request of the Christian colonists who had arrived after the Mudejar revolt of 1264, to organize the council and facilitate the resettlement of the district.
Historical milestone
The Catholic Monarchs, who reigned between 1474 and 1516, informed the council of Yecla of the appointment of Gaspar Fabra as corregidor, a move that completed the town's separation from the Marquesado de Villena and its passage to direct dependence on the Crown of Castile.
Historical milestone
The French army occupied Yecla in January 1812 during the Peninsular War; the looting and reprisals against the town were added to the effort of close to a thousand men of Yecla who fought in that conflict.
Historical milestone
At dawn on 11 April 1813, the troops of the French general Harispe surprised in the streets of Yecla the Murcian division of Mijares, which withdrew towards Jumilla leaving hundreds dead and more than a thousand prisoners at the start of the Castalla campaign.
Historical milestone
By royal decree, Alfonso XII granted Yecla in 1878 the title of city, recognition of the demographic and economic growth reached during the 19th century, a few years before the narrow-gauge railway arrived in the town.
Food and drink
Recognized in May 1975, it is the only Spanish wine denomination of origin whose production zone is limited to a single municipality; its dominant variety is monastrell, accompanied by garnacha among the reds and verdil among the whites.
Food and drink
The local version of the shepherds' gazpacho: unleavened flatbread cut up and stewed with game meats and mountain snails, spiced and served with spring onion and pickles, accompanied by the local monastrell red.
Food and drink
A winter dish made only with flour, water, oil, garlic and salt, worked in the pan until it breaks into crumbs; it is accompanied by roast black puddings and longaniza and holds a central place in the meals of the Yecla festivities.
Food and drink
A domestic preparation deeply rooted in Yecla: fresh goat's cheese cut into slices and fried, served with tomato and sometimes with green pepper; it is eaten as a starter or as a light supper and makes use of the goat farming of the plateau.