Village
Moratalla is the westernmost municipality in the Región de Murcia, at the northern edge of the Noroeste comarca, with close to 7,500 inhabitants and a large municipal area of 952.94 km², the third largest in the region after Lorca and Jumilla. Its terrain is highly varied: to the west rises the Revolcadores massif, the region's highest point at over 2,000 metres, while to the east it descends to the valley of the río Segura, with the Cenajo reservoir. The río Alhárabe crosses the municipal area from west to east. The town sits at 681 metres, on the slopes of the sierra del Buitre. Moratalla preserves more than half of the region's cave paintings, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its Tamborada has been Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2018.
Monument
Fortress that dominates the skyline of the town of Moratalla, a reminder of its past as frontier land and a commandery of the knights of the Order of Santiago, with its keep as the most striking feature.
Monument
Church with colossal interior columns that houses the Museum of Sacred Art of Moratalla; the viewpoint in its sacristy gives panoramic views over the valley.
Monument
The castillo de Benizar stands on a large rock overlooking the ravine of the Moratalla hamlet of Benizar, around which the four original population centres of the area were established: La Tercia, Cortijo Arriba, Cortijo Abajo and El Villar. Its keep stands out, of Almohad origin and dated to the 12th century. On 5 July 1243, the castle, then called Abeneyzor, was granted by Ferdinand III of Castile to the Order of Santiago together with other fortresses of the region, as a reward for its role in the Reconquest. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), the tower remains abandoned today, though its remains preserve their particular beauty after withstanding almost a thousand years of erosion by wind and rain.
Nature
One of the shelters with prehistoric rock art open to visitors at the Calar de la Santa, in Moratalla, included in the UNESCO listing of the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula (1998).
Nature
The abrigos de la Cañaica del Calar form a group of Neolithic rock paintings at the site of la Cañaica de Andrés, near the Calar de la Santa, a hamlet of Moratalla. There are four rock shelters —Cañaica del Calar I, II, III and IV—, with seven caves spread over a steep ravine about two kilometres long; they were discovered in 1967 when a quarry was opened and were studied by professors Walter and Carbonell, who consider them one of the most important pictorial groups in Murcia, and they form part of the rock art of the Mediterranean arc declared a World Heritage Site. It is one of about 65 rock shelters with rock art catalogued in the municipality, in Levantine, schematic and historic styles.
Monument
Interpretation centre that serves as the gateway to the extensive prehistoric rock art heritage scattered through the ravines, cliffs and summits of the Moratalla district, with some 34 shelters identified in its surroundings.
Activity
Moratalla's Semana Santa includes the Drum Festival, part of the National Gatherings in Praise of the Drum and Bass Drum, a tradition declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
Nature
A group of four shelters with Neolithic parietal rock art -Cañaica del Calar I, II, III and IV, comprising seven caves- located in the Cañaica de Andrés spot, in the municipality of Moratalla, near the small settlement of Calar de la Santa. The paintings are found in a very steep and deep ravine, about two kilometres long, and are part of the rock art of the Mediterranean Basin of the Iberian Peninsula, declared a World Heritage Site. They were discovered in 1967 when a nearby quarry was opened, and were studied by professors Walter and Carbonell, who considered them one of the most important pictorial groups in the Region of Murcia. Nearby are other shelters, such as those of the Fuente del Sabuco, and the remains of an Eneolithic settlement.
Nature
Rock art groups in Moratalla, part of the municipality's 65 shelters with prehistoric paintings, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site within the Mediterranean Basin listing in 1998.
Curiosity
Moratalla is home to 65 shelters with rock paintings in the Levantine, Schematic and Historic styles, spread across its territory, including the groups of Cañaica del Calar, Fuente del Sabuco, La Molata and Fuente de la Rogativa. Levantine art dates back about ten thousand years and Schematic art about six thousand five hundred, both declared World Heritage Sites in 1998 as part of the rock art of the Mediterranean Basin of the Iberian Peninsula. The municipality concentrates more than half of all the rock paintings in the whole Region of Murcia.
Monument
The Franciscan Convent of San Sebastián de Moratalla, also known as the Convento de San Francisco, was built in 1574 and disentailed in 1835, with its church remaining part of the historic complex of the municipality as one of the religious buildings that form part of Moratalla's heritage.
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A historic hermitage in the town of Moratalla, part of the religious heritage surrounding the castle-fortress of the municipality.
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A small hermitage in Moratalla forming part of the group of minor religious buildings of the municipality.
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A historic hermitage in Moratalla, one of the minor churches scattered across its extensive municipal district.
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Rural sanctuary with an adjoining interpretation centre devoted to prehistoric rock art, located in open country six kilometres from the town of Moratalla, a municipality that holds more than half of the rock paintings of the Region of Murcia, with about thirty caves of Levantine and schematic art up to ten thousand years old. The Casa de Cristo Regional Rock Art Interpretation Centre opened in 2007 to preserve and promote this heritage, though it has remained closed since January 2013.
Monument
The sanctuary of the Rogativa is a hermitage located in the municipality of Moratalla, at about 1285 metres above sea level, near the Revolcadores massif. Its construction, in Renaissance and Baroque style, dates from the sixteenth century, and the sanctuary complex together with its adjoining building was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) with the category of monument in 1982. According to tradition, in May 1535 a shepherd named Ginés Martínez Cuenca saw a virgin appear after throwing a stone at a white dove, who asked him for a hermitage to be built there. The temple, built of brick, wood and local stone, suffered a fire that forced it to be rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and it retains inside a camarín with a painted dome. Every last Sunday of May the pilgrimage (romería) of the Virgen de la Rogativa is held.
Monument
A museum in Moratalla devoted to the Fiesta del Tambor and the running of the bulls of the local Semana Santa, with objects and documents on this tradition.
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An Islamic fortress of the 11th and 12th centuries beside the Calar de Incol, on the boundary between the provinces of Murcia and Albacete, with a polygonal plan, an albacara and corner towers; declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Nature
An Iberian settlement on a flat-topped hill in the district of Moratalla, one of the main sites of this period in the Noroeste comarca.
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The site of Los Molinicos is an Iberian settlement from the fourth century BC located in the municipality of Moratalla (northwest of the Region of Murcia), close to the Bolvonegro gorge, within the municipality's pre-Roman archaeological heritage.
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A settlement of the Iberian period in the district of Moratalla, one of several protohistoric sites documented in the municipality.
Nature
A group of Levantine rock art discovered in 1984 with more than twenty figures of quadrupeds and humans alongside schematic motifs, part of the Mediterranean Arc declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.
Monument
Group of rock shelters with cave paintings discovered in 1979 in the area of Pedro Gurullo, part of Moratalla's extraordinary rock art heritage. The Risca I and II shelters were found by the young Pedro Sánchez at the farmhouse of the Rincón de Pedro Gurullo, and form part of the rock art of the Mediterranean arc of the Iberian Peninsula, of Levantine tradition and roughly 10,000 years old, with cultic expressions from hunter-gatherer groups of the Epipalaeolithic. This group, together with the rest of the region's rock art, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.
Nature
Rock shelter with cave paintings added to the catalogue of Moratalla's rock art in 2004, after the discovery of a new frieze in the area of the Molino de Capel. The site, known as Molino de Capel III, was located by the archaeologist Javier Ros, from Gandía, and confirmed the importance of this spot for rock art. Together with the rest of Moratalla's sites, it forms part of the rock art of the Mediterranean arc of the Iberian Peninsula, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.
Nature
A shelter discovered in 1978 depicting two stylised female figures in long skirts, one of the most singular scenes in the Levantine rock art of Moratalla.
Monument
A former snow well in the district of Moratalla, historically used to store ice and compacted snow for preserving food.
Nature
An old cobbled path cut into the limestone that historically gave access to Moratalla, zigzagging beneath great rock faces.
Nature
A waterfall and natural pool in the district of Moratalla, a traditional bathing spot on a route that runs past the abandoned farmsteads of Hondares de Arriba and Hondares de Abajo.
Historical milestone
With the territory incorporated into Castile after the treaty of Alcaraz, the commandery of Moratalla was constituted in 1245, which remained in the hands of the Order of Santiago and organized the defense and settlement of a vast mountain territory.
Historical milestone
The Moratalla fire of 1994 began on 4 July in the area of the Peñón del Serrano, possibly caused by an electrical fault when a pine tree made contact with power lines, following cabling maintenance work in the previous days. The fire destroyed more than thirty thousand hectares of woodland in the municipality in 1994, the largest fire recorded in the Region of Murcia: almost the entire Sierra de la Muela and Sierra del Cerezo burned, along with the hills up to the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza, in Calasparra, with fronts also at Benizar, the Camping La Puerta -which had to be evacuated- and Cieza, together making up a perimeter of 90 kilometres. There were no fatalities, and the recovery of the pine forests and undergrowth has continued over decades.
Food and drink
The sierra olive grove occupies much of the vast municipal district and gives a mountain oil that, together with cereals and almonds, has sustained the agrarian economy of the outlying villages of Moratalla for centuries.