Village
Las Torres de Cotillas is a municipality in the Vega Media del Segura, in the Region of Murcia, with almost 22,700 inhabitants, 15 kilometres from the capital, between the Mula and Segura rivers. Already exploited in Roman times, as shown by the La Loma thermal baths site, and later by Muslim alquerías, it passed to the Crown of Castile in 1243. The municipality dates back to the 14th century, when Alfonso XI granted Pedro Martínez Calvillo a royal privilege of mayorazgo (hereditary entail), and its later history was marked by the struggle over irrigation water for its orchards. Transformed from an agricultural settlement into a centre of industrial development due to its position on the routes to Madrid, Andalusia and the Levante, it preserves the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Salceda and the D'Estoup mansion.
Activity
Holy Week in Las Torres de Cotillas, a town whose population, decimated by the malaria bred in its flooded rice paddies, fell to barely twenty-five inhabitants in 1719, which led to a ban on rice cultivation the following year.
Activity
Las Torres de Cotillas's patronal festivities in honor of the Virgen de la Salceda, with a pilgrimage, an International Folklore Festival, an offering of flowers and fruit, a parade of floats and troupes, and the traditional burning of the Raspajo, which brings the festivities to a close.
Monument
The church of Nuestra Señora de la Salceda, in Las Torres de Cotillas, is a Catholic church in Baroque style whose construction began in the late 18th century and was extended throughout the 19th, being completed in 1902. During the Civil War, most of its images, including that of the patron saint, were destroyed, and the upper part of the bell tower was demolished; after the war the whole building was restored, and in 2005 a new full restoration was undertaken. Inside, with three naves, notable features include the chapel of Nuestro Padre Jesús, that of the D'Estoup family, the camarín and the image of the Virgin of la Salceda herself, carved in 1941 by the Murcian sculptor Juan González Moreno. The main door opens onto the town's central avenue, near the town hall.
Monument
Former hunting lodge built in the early 19th century at El Coto, belonging to the D'Estoup family of Murcian landowners, later turned into an eclectic-style manor house and used as a school in the 1960s.
Monument
Chapel dedicated to the Holy Cross that came into being during the enlargement of the church of Nuestra Señora de la Salceda, between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
Curiosity
The oldest historical references to this land go back to the 1st century BC, when the Greek geographer and historian Strabo described in his 'Geographia' the lands of Las Torres watered by the River Segura.
Activity
Las Torres de Cotillas' main festivities, which include the patron saint's pilgrimage, the International Folklore Festival, the offering of flowers and fruit, the parade of floats and troupes and the traditional burning of the Raspajo that brings the celebrations to a close.
Monument
A railway station building from the late 19th century, now converted into a restaurant. It formed part of the Murcia–Albacete section of the Chinchilla–Cartagena line, which reached Las Torres de Cotillas in 1865; the railway was key to the municipality's economic activity. Today, restored, it operates as a restaurant and has been visited by the chef Alberto Chicote on his television programme.
Monument
The Peñeta de La Florida, in the hamlet of La Florida in Las Torres de Cotillas, is the oldest surviving hydraulic remain in the municipality: the ruins of a medieval aqueduct that linked the towns of Alguazas and Cotillas, in use during the 16th century and probably already in the 14th. A major flood in the 17th century damaged it, and of the original construction only a mortar wall still stands after four centuries. It is listed as a Bien Catalogado (a heritage-listing category ranking below the Bien de Interés Cultural) by the Región de Murcia's Regional Ministry of Culture, and is awaiting restoration.
Monument
The cave houses of El Rodeo and El Palomar are a group of dwellings cut into the rock from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, located in the western part of Las Torres de Cotillas, next to the boundary with Campos del Río and within sight of the Río Mula.
Monument
Remains of 1st-century AD Roman baths belonging to a rural villa, located in the hamlet of La Loma, in Las Torres de Cotillas. The villa reached its greatest splendour in the late Roman period. Pottery fragments and ashlar blocks already turned up in the 1920s and 1930s, and in 1979 the bath complex was fully excavated, made up of two square rooms about four metres to a side with hypocaust underfloor heating, brick pillars and a corridor leading to the furnace. A necropolis with coins and infant burials was also found nearby. The site remains buried today, awaiting future study.
Monument
A permanent exhibition opened in 2014 in the former town hall of Las Torres de Cotillas (Murcia), known as the Exposición Cabildo Superior de Cofradías. In it, the municipality's eight Holy Week brotherhoods and the Association of Drummers display banners, old photographs, Nazarene robes and other processional items, along with an explanatory video on the history of the local Holy Week and several dioramas recreating scenes from the Passion.
Activity
A popular celebration on 3 May centred on the May Cross in Las Torres de Cotillas.
Activity
The festival of the San Antón bonfires, held on 17 January in Las Torres de Cotillas.
Historical milestone
Pedro Martínez Calvillo instituted an entail over Cotillas that turned the place into the lordship of a single lineage. The dominion later passed to the house of the marquises of Corvera and conditioned the distribution of landed property well into the 19th century.
Historical milestone
The fevers associated with the waterlogged rice fields decimated the vega: the population of Cotillas was reduced to barely twenty-five inhabitants in 1719. A royal order banned the cultivation of rice the following year and opened the way to the slow demographic recovery of the comarca.
Food and drink
Scramble of courgette and onion sweated over a low heat and set with egg, tied to the huerta that surrounds the town centre. It is eaten warm as a starter or as a tapa and figures on the menus of practically every establishment in the municipality.
Food and drink
The local cooking combines huerta and dry farming: semolina, rice potage, olla gitana, michirones of dried broad beans and migas ruleras made with day-old bread. The cured sausages come from the pig slaughter, and among the sweets figure peaches in syrup and aniseed rings.