Village
Mula is the capital of the Mula River comarca, in the Region of Murcia, and the seat of its judicial district. It has close to 18,000 inhabitants spread between the urban centre and numerous outlying hamlets (pedanías), including Fuente Librilla, Yéchar, Baños de Mula and La Puebla de Mula. Its name may come from the Latin Mola - already documented as Mula in the pact of Theodemir in 713 - or from the adjective mulleus, 'red or purple in colour', in reference to the nearby Almagra hill. It enjoys a dry Mediterranean climate, while its mountains, which reach 1,521 metres at the Selva peak, see winter snowfalls. It is famous for the Tamborada de Mula, declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by Unesco, and for the festivities of the Niño Jesús de Mula.
Monument
The parish church of San Miguel Arcángel de Mula, founded in 1244 and located on the town hall square, forms, together with its tower and the nearby clock tower, one of the most representative sights of the municipality; it was extended with a south doorway in 1618. It suffered enormous destruction during the Civil War, in which only the entrance gate was saved. In its crossing chapels are those of the Marqués de los Vélez and of San Felipe, with the relic of the saint's body brought from Sicily by the Marquesa de los Vélez in 1648. It houses a painting museum formed from the donation of Pilar de la Canal in 1940, with works from the 16th to the 20th century from France, the Netherlands and Mexico, including pieces by Ribera and Mengs.
Monument
An Iberian archaeological site from the 5th and 4th centuries BC, located on a steep-sided hill above the Mula river and protected by a rocky outcrop called Piedra Pollera; it includes a settlement, a sanctuary and a necropolis covering about two hectares. The settlement, still awaiting excavation, comprised between 40 and 50 houses and an estimated population of around 250 inhabitants; the sanctuary, in a building adapted to the hilltop, has yielded votive offerings in the form of human figures and, above all, of equids — 160 pieces including horses, mares and foals — richly decorated. In the necropolis, excavated by Emeterio Cuadrado between 1948 and 1988, more than 500 tombs have been found, the oldest dating from the late 5th century BC; its finds have been on display since 1993 at the El Cigarralejo Museum of Iberian Art.
Monument
Monastery of Poor Clares built between the 17th and 18th centuries on the former hermitage of Nuestra Señora de los Olmos, of which the 16th-century bell tower is preserved. Inside the enclosure, the cloister stands out as the most notable element of the complex. The monastery is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Curiosity
Festival declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2018, with thousands of drummers dressed in black playing without pause from midnight on the Tuesday of Holy Week.
Activity
Festival of Mula commemorating the supposed apparition of the Infant Jesus to the shepherd friar Pedro de Jesús Botía in 1648. The image descends from its sanctuary on 8 September, and the bulk of the festival is concentrated between the 19th and the 25th: on the 21st, feast day of the Infant Jesus, there are religious services and an evening procession; on the 22nd a pilgrimage returns the image to its sanctuary, with an open-air meal; on the 23rd the patroness, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is celebrated, and on the 25th San Felipe Mártir.
Activity
The festival of Saint Isidore of Mula, agricultural in nature and held in honour of the patron saint of farmers, has been celebrated since 1944-1945 on the weekend of the second Saturday of May. On Friday the gachasmigas contest is held in Cristóbal Gabarrón park; on Saturday morning the procession sets out from the church of Saint Dominic, with regional choirs and locals dressed in traditional costume, and in the afternoon floats parade, pulled by agricultural machinery and decorated in imitation of the region's market-garden buildings, with local produce and drinks handed out; the day closes with an open-air dance and concert.
Monument
The castillo de los Vélez crowns the hill of Mula, on the site of an earlier Islamic fortress mentioned by the traveller Al-Idrisi in the 12th century. The present fortress is the work of Pedro Fajardo y Chacón, marqués de los Vélez, who was humiliated in 1520 when the people of Mula rose up as a comunidad and forced him to swear to the privileges that Fernando III had granted the town after its conquest in 1244; to secure their submission, he had this Renaissance fortress built from 1524 onward, more a symbol of lordly authority than a military defence. He got around the royal ban on building fortresses with a false plaque attributing the work to the emperor Antoninus Pius. It may have been designed by Luis Fajardo, master builder of the household. It preserves a keep, a nave with a barrel vault and a cistern; it is a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
The Museo de Arte Ibérico El Cigarralejo, housed since 1993 in the baroque palace of the marqués de Menahermosa, in Mula, brings together the finds from the necropolis of the El Cigarralejo site, on a hill above the río Mula, excavated by the archaeologist Emeterio Cuadrado Díaz between 1948 and 1988. From the more than 500 graves located in the necropolis — 382 of them published, the oldest dating from the late 5th century BC — come the more than eighty grave goods, ceramics, sculptures and weapons dated between the 4th and 1st centuries BC. Particularly notable is the group of votive offerings found in the site's sanctuary: 160 richly decorated equine figures — horses, mares, foals and donkeys — comparable to pieces such as the horse's head from Fuente la Higuera in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional.
Activity
A body of Catholic rites of the Semana Santa of Mula, in the Región de Murcia, with processional parades established since the late 17th century and organised by different brotherhoods: that of Nuestra Señora del Carmen, the oldest, brings out the Samaritana procession on Holy Wednesday; that of Jesús Nazareno organises the Holy Thursday procession, with pasos by Sánchez Lozano and González Moreno; and on Good Friday and Easter Sunday other brotherhoods parade with the Piedad, the Soledad or the Resucitado. Its best-known moment is the Noche de los Tambores, which originated in the mid-19th century as a form of popular protest, when thousands of drums sound without pause through the night of Holy Tuesday. It was declared of Interés Turístico Regional (a Spanish tourism designation) in 1990, Nacional in 2009 and Internacional in 2022, and it forms part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage recognised by Unesco.
Curiosity
Founded in 1606, it is the oldest brotherhood of Mula's Semana Santa; its processions, such as that of the Cristo de la Samaritana from the hermitage of El Carmen, are documented without interruption since the late 17th century.
Nature
Thermal spring known since Roman times, whose waters rise naturally at a constant temperature of between 36 and 37 ºC and were declared of medicinal use in 1882. A 17th-century earthquake shifted the spring from the left bank of the River Mula to the right, where the pedanía of Baños de Mula stands today.
Monument
In the pedanía of La Puebla there survives a structure of Islamic origin with a gateway and cisterns dated to the 8th century, considered one of the oldest Muslim fortified buildings in the Region of Murcia, alongside the 15th-century tower known as the 'ermita vieja'.
Activity
The municipality's main festivities, which begin on 8 September with the pilgrimage bringing down the Niño and continue until the end of the month, with religious events in honour of the Niño Jesús, the Virgen del Carmen and San Felipe, as well as a wide programme of music and popular events.
Activity
The pedanía of El Niño de Mula holds its own patron saint festival with a festive and cultural programme for all ages, separate from that of the main town.
Monument
A 12th-century castle in the hamlet of La Puebla de Mula, of Muslim origin: some authors trace its founding back to the 8th century. It preserves the only elbow-shaped gate in the whole Region of Murcia, and today the access gate and the cisterns can be visited. It played a strategic role in the incorporation of the kingdom of Murcia into the Crown of Castile in the 13th century, and it is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
A 15th-century medieval tower in the outlying village of La Puebla de Mula, opened to the public in 2025 and built when the place was resettled.
Monument
Church whose origins date back to the 16th century, although its current Baroque appearance was completed in 1780; with a Latin-cross floor plan and three naves, and a façade and tower of brick combined with masonry and Murcian plasterwork. After the 1999 earthquake it suffered significant damage and underwent extensive restoration.
Nature
A Roman settlement of the 2nd century BC on the Cerro de la Almagra, in the outlying village of Baños de Mula, with fortifications and architectural remains that attest to the importance of its thermal waters in antiquity.
Nature
A thermal spa in Mula whose medicinal waters were officially recognised in 1882 and emerge at a temperature of between 37 and 39 degrees; the first bathing facilities were built in 1826.
Curiosity
The extensive municipal area of Mula is organised into numerous hamlets. The main ones include Fuente Librilla (580 inhabitants in 2020), El Niño de Mula (817), Yéchar (383), La Puebla de Mula (254), Casas Nuevas (147) and Baños de Mula (51), as well as small settlements such as Alquibla, Ardal, La Herreña, Hoya Noguera and Cuadrados, Pinar Hermoso, Retamosa or Rincones, each with barely a handful of residents.
Curiosity
Yéchar is an official hamlet of the municipality of Mula, with 383 inhabitants according to the 2020 register, although its specific medieval origin has not been possible to confirm documentarily.
Activity
Traditional cooking of Baños de Mula, with migas con tropezones, pipirrana, olla fresca and guiso con pelotas, available in the restaurants at the spa.
Monument
A tower which, together with the Church of San Miguel on the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, forms the most emblematic monumental ensemble in the historic centre of Mula.
Monument
One of the oldest churches in Mula, built after the Christian conquest of 1244 by Alfonso X on the site of a former mosque. The present building began to be erected in 1557 in the Renaissance style, while the Rosary chapel and the tower date from the 18th century, giving the complex a mixture of periods. Inside it preserves paintings by the painter Mateo Gilarte.
Monument
The Carmen Hermitage, in Mula (Region of Murcia), stands in the upper part of the town, right in the old quarter, and is a magnificent viewpoint over the town. It is of construction typical of Murcian Baroque, from the 18th century, though it preserves a 15th-century bell tower, the oldest surviving in Mula. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), it houses the city's patron saint, Nuestra Señora del Carmen, whose feast day is celebrated on 23 September with religious services in the hermitage and an evening procession.
Monument
An 18th-century Baroque building that today houses the Museo Ciudad de Mula, free to visit, within the national historic-artistic site declared in 1981.
Monument
An 18th-century Baroque hermitage built at the site of Balate, which keeps the image of the Christ Child carved in 1940 by the Mula sculptor José Planes after the original was destroyed in the Civil War.
Curiosity
The tradition that during the plague of 1648 the Christ Child appeared at Balate to the shepherd Pedro Botía and asked for a hermitage to be built for him and his image to be taken to Mula, whereupon the epidemic miraculously ceased.
Curiosity
A hamlet of the municipality of Mula, situated at the foot of the Sierra de la Muela, about seven kilometres from its town centre and near the Fuente Caputa area, with barely more than three hundred inhabitants and today turned into a dormitory village also popular with foreign visitors. It preserves remains of an old Roman road that linked up with Begastri and the city of Villaricos, as well as Eneolithic finds at the Cejo Cortado, and its name comes from the Arabic Yisar or Yusar, referring to an important defensive tower that King Alfonso X went so far as to grant to a Muslim vassal. After the depopulation suffered in the Early Modern period, its economy today revolves around apricot growing, one of the main products of its renowned vega.
Curiosity
An outlying village that grew up around a thermal spring bought in 1720 by the mayor of Mula, Ginés Martínez Salazar, where the medicinal waters, officially recognised in 1882, are used in an unusual way, in private baths and pools in the villagers' own houses.
Curiosity
A hamlet of the municipality of Mula, founded in the 19th century, in the Río Mula district (Región de Murcia), with around 156 inhabitants. It has a state primary school, the CEIP Casas Nuevas, a small health centre, a municipal centre run by Mula town council, and a chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, its patron saint, where Mass is held every Sunday. Rain-fed farming, with large stretches of trees, is its main economic activity, although some of its inhabitants travel to work in nearby towns. Set on high ground, next to the old road to Lorca between the Sierra de Espuña, about two kilometres away, and the Sierra del Cambrón, its winters are often covered in snow.
Nature
A natural site about 10 kilometres from Mula, near the Sierra de Ricote, where a spring of constant flow forms small waterfalls and natural bathing pools between the Loma de Herrero and the Cejo Cortado.
Curiosity
The brotherhood responsible for the Maundy Thursday procession in Mula, which sets out from the parish church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán with floats such as the Christ at the Column, the Veronica and Jesús Nazareno.
Monument
The former manorial residence of the marquises of Los Vélez, lords of Mula, a civil heritage building of the modern period (16th to 18th centuries) listed in the Special Protection Plan for the Historic Centre of Mula.
Historical milestone
The first documentary mention of Mula appears in the Pact of Teodomiro, or Pact of Tudmir, the treaty of capitulation that the Visigothic count Teodomiro signed on 5 April 713 with Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa, son of the governor Musa ibn Nusair, after the Muslim conquest of Hispania. The document set the terms of submission for the southeast of the peninsula, a region thenceforth called Tudmir: its inhabitants kept their property and religion in exchange for tribute. Among the towns named in the various copies of the pact, which survive only through later Arab chronicles, Mula (مولة, Mūla) is one of the few whose identification has never been in doubt, together with Orihuela, Alicante and Lorca, which makes the pact the earliest known written reference to the town.
Historical milestone
The infante Alfonso, the future Alfonso X, took Mula in 1244; the stronghold, which had resisted the protectorate agreed the year before, was incorporated into Castile and its Muslim population was displaced from the fortified enclosure.
Historical milestone
The chief magistrate of the kingdom of Murcia bought in 1373 from the council of Mula the lands and the waters of the place of La Puebla, the first piece of the Fajardo lineage's penetration into a territory it would end up dominating entirely.
Historical milestone
John II handed over in 1430 the lordship of the town to Alfonso Yáñez Fajardo II as a reward for having occupied the marquisate of Villena; the local oligarchy litigated against the donation for generations without managing to revoke it.
Historical milestone
The town joined the Comunero uprising against seigneurial power in the summer of 1520; the response of the marquis of los Vélez marked the relations between the council and its lord for the rest of the sixteenth century.
Historical milestone
The ritual drumming of Mula was inscribed in 2018 on the list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, along with other Spanish tamboradas, and in 2022 the festival obtained the declaration of international tourist interest.
Food and drink
A soupy rice cooked with the mondongo, the offal and trimmings of the pig or the lamb used after the slaughter; it is the most characteristic rice of Mula and is served at the festive meals of its outlying villages.