Village
Alcantarilla is a municipality of nearly 44,000 inhabitants in the Región de Murcia, 10 kilometres from the capital, of whose metropolitan area it forms part, and has the highest population density in the region. Its name comes from the Arabic Al-Qantara, “the bridge”, with the Romance suffix -illa. Settlement dates back to the 5th century BC, with an Iberian settlement beside the Segura and Guadalentín rivers; after the Roman conquest, the population moved to the Agua Salá, made fertile by a meander of the Segura and a medicinal spring. From the 8th century the Muslims developed an irrigation system from which the acequia Mayor Alquibla was born, whose most representative features are the Rueda de Alcantarilla waterwheel and the puente de las Pilas bridge. Today it is a transport hub served by several rail lines.
Monument
Open-air museum opened in 1967 around the great waterwheel of Alcantarilla, medieval in origin and rebuilt several times, and a 15th-century aqueduct. The wheel and the aqueduct are declared Bien de Interés Cultural, and the museum also recreates a traditional huerta barraca.
Monument
Alcantarilla's earliest church, dedicated to San Sebastián, was built in the mid-16th century, around 1545, and was torn down shortly after 1581 for lack of space; on its site the old temple of San Pedro was then built, under the direction of the stonemason Juan Rodríguez, when the lord of the town, Lázaro de Uxodemar, changed its dedication to San Pedro Apóstol. That very fine piece of architecture was demolished in 1961, and in its place rose the present parish church, the work of the architect Enrique Sancho Ruano, with the expressionist altarpiece of the high altar by the sculptor Anastasio Martínez, presided over by a seven-metre crucifix.
Activity
The fiestas de la Bruja are the patronal festivals of Alcantarilla (Murcia) in honour of the Virgen de la Salud, held at the end of May and declared de Interés Turístico en la Región de Murcia (the region's official tourist-interest designation). They begin with the election of the queens and, on the preceding weekend, with a medieval market with an inquisitorial atmosphere and a pilgrimage in honour of the patroness. In the last week there is a succession of parades by local clubs, festivals of flamenco, copla, tango and folk music, the traditional Caza y Juicio a la Bruja and numerous musical performances. The climax comes with the Desfile de Carrozas along calle Mayor, with toys handed out, and the Quema de la Bruja in plaza Adolfo Suárez, where a huge papier-mâché witch is burned before the fireworks display that brings the festivities to a close.
Activity
The Fiestas de San Roque are held in mid-August in the barrio of the same name, Alcantarilla's old quarter and considered the city's noble district; according to the municipality's own account, they are Alcantarilla's oldest festival. The programme combines religious acts, with the patron saint's procession, and popular activities such as open-air dances, paella and migas contests and traditional games. The barrio's church, the home of these festivities, was even used as a prison during the Civil War.
Monument
The Rueda de Alcantarilla, also called Rueda de la Huerta, stands next to the Museo Etnológico de la Huerta, in the north of the municipality, and since 1982 has formed with it and with the aqueduct that feeds it a group declared Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection). The first waterwheel, made of wood, dates from the 15th century and raised the water of the Acequia Mayor Alquibla to the acequia del Turbedal; in 1890 a larger wheel was built, and the present one, now made of metal, was installed in 1956 with the same measurements as the 1890 wheel: 11 metres in diameter, 1.90 wide and 8 high, with 72 buckets arranged in two rings that collect the water from the channel and pour it into a higher canal, irrigating the Murcian huerta by gravity.
Monument
A hydraulic structure of medieval origin, with masonry from the 12th to the 18th centuries, which crosses a rambla as it passes through Alcantarilla as part of the historic irrigation system of the huerta.
Monument
An 18th-century palace that once housed a tribunal of the Inquisition and is today the seat of the municipal library of Alcantarilla, declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico Nacional (Spain's heritage designation in force between 1931 and 1985) in 1982.
Monument
The Mansión de Terol, also called Casa del Cura Saavedra or Cuartel Viejo, stands at number 8 Calle del Cura, in the San Pedro district of Alcantarilla. It was built in the 18th century, when the growth of the municipality made the parish of San Pedro Apóstol one of the leading ones in the district and a new ecclesiastical seat had to be erected near the church; it is one of the five oldest buildings in the city. After the 19th-century disentailments it became a cavalry barracks of the Guardia Civil, a corps that occupied the building for more than a century, until the civil war; from that period, nineteenth-century bullets and horseshoes bearing the GC symbol were later found. Restored, it retains notable features of the bourgeois home of the period.
Monument
A building of modernist architecture located on a corner of Alcantarilla's town centre, one of the most notable examples of this style in the town. It stands on Calle Mayor, at the corner with Plaza de la Constitución, and dates from the early 20th century, when the industrial boom Alcantarilla experienced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries encouraged the construction of modernist residences such as this one.
Monument
Sanctuary dedicated to the patron saint of Alcantarilla, the Virgen de la Salud, also called Virgen Niña because of her appearance resembling that of a young girl. It stands in the place known as Agua Salá, next to the Museo Etnológico de la Huerta. The present-day temple, built of stone in the 1970s, takes up Romanesque features, such as the Latin cross that crowns it and the round arch of the entrance, and because of its small size has only a single nave. The façade, with a porch and a pediment topped by a bell-gable, follows the model of the 18th-century Murcian hermitages, with a rose window and three arched windows on the sides. Having no image of her own, the Virgin is venerated inside through local paintings depicting scenes from her life, among them her apparition at the Puente de las Pilas.
Monument
The Convento de los Mínimos, or of San Francisco de Paula, is a former monastic complex in Alcantarilla that remained under ecclesiastical jurisdiction until 1580 and whose construction, in Baroque style, began in the second quarter of the 18th century, after the community of the Minims arrived in the town in 1704, bringing with them masters of their order. It served as a hospice and hospital for Alcantarilla and its district, and between 1721 and 1767 it housed in its church the local patron saint, the Virgen de la Salud. After the disentailments, the convent passed into private hands in 1860. Of the complex, the church façade survives, of brick with a stone doorway, part of the base of its towers, and a square three-storey cloister.
Activity
Holy Week of Alcantarilla (Huerta de Murcia), organised by the Junta de Hermandades Pasionarias, which coordinates foot-kissings, penitential ways of the cross and commemorative masses from mid-February onward in honour of the Nazareno. The most singular procession is that of the Misericordia, on Holy Monday, which sets out from the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción and in which the bearers carry the float using Andalusian techniques, different from those of other celebrations in the region. On Dolores Friday the Virgen de los Dolores processes; on Palm Sunday there is the blessing of palms and the procession of the Entrada Triunfal; and on Passion Sunday the Santísimo Cristo de la Esperanza is moved. Next to the church of San Pedro there is a Museo Procesional with carvings, thrones and robes of the main brotherhoods.
Historical milestone
Alfonso X handed over the town in 1283 to the council of Murcia on the express condition of Christianizing its population, still mostly Muslim; the ownership of the place would later be long disputed between the council and the diocese of Cartagena.
Historical milestone
A combined flood of the Segura and the Guadalentín destroyed in 1545 practically all the built fabric, which forced the settlement to be rebuilt on higher ground; the new site determined the urban form the town still keeps.
Historical milestone
Philip II detached the town in 1580 from the diocese of Cartagena and sold it to the Genoese merchant Lázaro de Usodemar, a typical operation of the sale of seigneuries with which the Crown tried to ease the Hispanic monarchy's debt.
Food and drink
The first license to open a vegetable canning factory in the town was granted in 1897, and from then on the canning of apricot, peach, artichoke and tomato from the huerta became the municipality's main trade.