Village
Totana is a municipality in the Bajo Guadalentín, in the Región de Murcia, seat of its judicial district, with 33,358 inhabitants (INE 2025), known as the Ciudad Alfarera for its traditional pottery craft, in a valley next to the Sierra Espuña. Its origin dates back to Roman times, when the place was known as Mave or Mavitania; after the Christian conquest, in 1243, it was incorporated into the Crown of Castile through the Treaty of Alcaraz. The mountain settlement of Aledo, of which Totana had been an outlying district, moved down to the valley in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, after the fall of the Kingdom of Granada, and Totana eventually became the municipal seat; the two settlements were not split into separate municipalities until 1793.
Monument
Museum housed in a former potter's workshop and home, keeping traditional pieces and tools, evidence of Totana's long ceramic tradition.
Monument
Potters' kilns of Andalusi origin listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural, a relic of a ceramic craft passed down in Totana from generation to generation since at least the 18th century.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of Totana, which begin with the pilgrimage bringing the patron saint down from her shrine on 8 December and end with her return in procession on 7 January; they include musical evenings, ethnographic routes and dramatised tours.
Curiosity
Totana is one of Spain's leading pottery centres; its street names still include Ollerías and Tinajeras in memory of a craft handed down from parents to children over generations.
Monument
Medieval monastic complex set seven kilometres from Totana on the road to Aledo, at the foot of Sierra Espuña, founded in the thirteenth century by the knights of the Order of Santiago; it preserves wooden coffering and restored murals by the painter Juan Ibáñez, and in it Saint Eulalia of Mérida, patroness of Totana since 1644, is venerated.
Monument
Monumental church in the historic quarter of Totana, in the Murcian comarca of Bajo Guadalentín, with a Mudéjar artesonado ceiling and work by the sculptor Salzillo. The church was built between 1535 and 1567 in the Tuscan style, with a Plateresque portal and a basilical interior of three naves, six bays, side chapels and a polygonal apse. The Mudéjar artesonado ceiling is the work of Esteban Riberón, from Lorca, and the building also preserves a Baroque altarpiece with Solomonic columns and a gilded tabernacle carved by Antonio Caro El Viejo, a native of Orihuela.
Monument
A museum in Totana devoted to the pottery and ceramic tradition of the municipality.
Curiosity
The feast of Santa Eulalia de Totana (Bajo Guadalentín, Murcia), held every 10 December, coincides with the taking of possession of Totana and Aledo in 1257 by the Order of Santiago. On 8 December the image of the patron saint is carried in procession from her sanctuary, known as La Santa, down to the town, and remains in the church of Santiago until 7 January, when a new pilgrimage returns it to the sanctuary. The sanctuary was built by the knights of the Order of Santiago on land granted by Alfonso X in the 13th century, and preserves inside 1624 paintings depicting the life and miracles of the saint.
Monument
The church of the Tres Avemarías, in Renaissance style and dating from 1604, with a 17th-century crypt, was built when the Alcantarine Franciscans took charge of the building. The order had settled in Totana in 1602, when it received the hermitage of San Roque and adjoining land to raise the convent of San Buenaventura, of which this church was the spiritual centre; the town council ceded the plot after repeated petitions to the Crown, since the parish of Santiago could no longer cope with all the faithful of the town.
Monument
The hermitage of San Roque de Totana stands on a hill north of the town centre and dates from the 18th century. It is a building in Tuscan style, rectangular in plan and with a single nave covered by a semicircular vault on transverse arches and a hemispherical dome over the crossing, decorated with 18th-century paintings of floral motifs and garlands in blue and red tones. Five chapels open on either side of the nave, and at the main altar is kept, in a glass niche, the wooden image of San Roque, beneath a painting depicting Santo Domingo receiving the rosary from the hands of the Virgin.
Monument
A hermitage built between 1693 and 1697 in Totana, one of the minor temples of the town centre. It stands to the northwest, in the San José district, and had to be restored at the end of the 18th century; the last restoration dates from 1995. The building, in Tuscan style, has a single nave, rectangular in plan, covered by a semicircular vault and surrounded by an atrium. Above the main door stands a stone statue of the Christ Child, and in corner niches are images of the Virgin Mary and San José; at the main altar is venerated, in a camarín, the carved wooden image of its titular saint, San José, and the nave also has four side chapels.
Monument
La Bastida de Totana is an archaeological site of the Argaric culture on a conical hill about six kilometres west of Totana (Region of Murcia), occupied between 2200 and 1550 BC. With at least 4.5 hectares, it is one of the largest settlements of the early Bronze Age in continental Europe and one of the most important settlements of recent European prehistory, with fortifications dated to around 2200 BC and an incipient urbanism marked by political and economic inequalities. It was declared Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2005. Research began in 1869, and since 2008 it has been excavated by the Arqueoecología Social Mediterránea group of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, making it one of the best-known Argaric sites.
Nature
A site in Totana occupied from the Bronze Age to the 11th century, possibly to be identified with the Islamic Towtana that gives the municipality its name.
Curiosity
The cooking of Totana includes dishes such as rice with lean pork, fried rabbit with tomato, cocido totanero, michirones and pipirrana, along with sweets such as paparajotes and pan de calatrava.
Curiosity
Totana holds the title of Ciudad Alfarera, or Pottery Town, for its deep-rooted craft tradition in ceramics and pottery, with a technology centre devoted to the trade on Avenida de la Rambla de la Santa.
Historical milestone
The council of Aledo forbade in 1517 the building of dwellings in Totana except those needed for work in the fields, with the aim of halting the transfer of residents; the order was ignored even by aldermen, mayors and the parish priest himself.
Historical milestone
Towards the 16th century, after earlier attempts such as the 1517 decree banning the building of houses in Totana, it was agreed to hold the town councils in Totana and to appoint a local magistrate (alcalde pedáneo) for Aledo, sealing the demographic shift between the fortress town and its outlying settlement, which already far surpassed it in population and agricultural wealth.
Historical milestone
The creation of a mayor's office of its own for Totana completed its political emancipation from Aledo, within the territory that the Order of Santiago had administered in the Guadalentín valley since the thirteenth century.
Food and drink
The great dish of Totana's Christmas: a long broth in which large meatballs of pork and beef kneaded with bread, egg and pine nuts are cooked, heirs of the use made of the pig slaughter carried out in midwinter.
Food and drink
A Christmas sweet of Andalusi root made with almond, honey and spices, pressed into a roll that is afterwards cut into portions; it survives as one of the most deeply rooted traditional baking recipes of the municipality.