Village
Molina de Segura is the fourth most populous municipality in the Region of Murcia, with more than 78,000 inhabitants, capital of the Vega Media del Segura comarca and part of the Murcian metropolitan area. Located 10 kilometres from the capital, on the left bank of the Segura River, it extends between the traditional orchard of the flood plain and terrain that rises toward the north, where the Sierra de la Espada, the Sierra del Águila and the Sierra de la Pila stand, reaching heights of up to 880 metres. A large part of its population lives spread across fourteen outlying hamlets (pedanías), including Romeral, Torrealta, Ribera de Molina and El Llano. It is the leading national producer of sweets and confectionery, accounting for close to a third of Spanish production.
Monument
An 18th-century Baroque parish church, the first to be built in Molina de Segura, now located in the Castle Quarter, south of the city; it inherits its irrigation system from the La Algaida weir, whose construction was ordered in the 12th century by the Wolf King, Muhammad ibn Mardanis. Until recently it kept the town's books of births, marriages and deaths, now held at the Bishopric of Murcia, and it was declared a historic-artistic monument of the Region of Murcia in 1983. It is the district's main church for its antiquity and for the frescoes by Bernabé Gil, an artist of the Salzillo school, kept inside; it houses the image of the Virgin of the Assumption and hosts each September the transfer of the patron saint, the Virgin of the Consolation, during the festivities.
Monument
Islamic defensive wall from the 11th to 13th centuries, with a non-angular tower, found in 2004 when an old factory was demolished in what is now the Castle Quarter of Molina de Segura (Murcia). The remains, together with the historic Maximino Moreno chimney, are now kept at the Wall Enclave Museum (MUDEM), where the town's oldest remains coexist with an avant-garde museum project.
Monument
The Casa Cárcel is the oldest building in Molina de Segura, built in 1604 as a municipal grain store. It has three floors and barrel vaults, and its classical-style façade displays a heraldic coat of arms of Charles III carved in stone. For years it served as a jail, used by the bailiffs to hold prisoners, which is where its present-day name comes from. Restored in the 1980s, it now houses the Mercedes Mendoza library and an exhibition hall, and is considered one of the most notable civil monuments of the 17th century in the town.
Monument
An 18th-century historic waterwheel on the Llano de Molina, in Molina de Segura, which takes its name from the lawyer Carlos Soriano, who acquired this land of El Llano y Saladar in 1875 and in 1887 founded an agricultural colony there, which he brought under cultivation with the help of this waterwheel. In 1892 a small hermitage was opened next to the settlers' house; the complex was restored and since 2003 has housed a House-Museum of Molina de Segura.
Nature
Seven canning factory chimneys preserved in Molina de Segura, dating from the 1930s to the 1960s, among them those of Prieto, Hernández Gil and Maximino Moreno.
Nature
Riverside ecosystem of the River Segura as it passes through Molina de Segura, near the Ajauque wetland and the Rambla Salada.
Curiosity
A contemporary sculpture by the artist Manolo Valdés in Molina de Segura, a tribute to the town's industrial heritage and cultural renewal. It is an eight-metre-tall lady located on the modern MUDEM square, next to the medieval wall of the old town; her hair branches out like a metal tree under which locals can sit, and her headdress incorporates elements of the local canning tradition. Chosen as the tourist image of the city, she represents a mind in constant ferment that breaks with convention and champions art and modernity.
Monument
Sanctuary of the patron saint of Molina de Segura, the Virgin of the Consolation, centre of the town's pilgrimage and patron saint festivities: the image leaves the hermitage in procession to the Archpriest Church of the Virgin of the Assumption, in the centre of the town.
Monument
An 18th-century Baroque building, the first church raised in the town, with a Baroque façade and a Neoclassical main altarpiece inside; it was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1983. It is located in the Castle Quarter, south of the city, and until a few years ago kept the town's books of births, marriages and deaths, now held at the Bishopric of Murcia. It is the main church of Molina de Segura for its antiquity and for the frescoes it houses, the work of Bernabé Gil, of the Salzillo school. The temple takes its name from the Virgin of the Assumption it houses, and it is also the church that receives the transfer of the patron saint, the Virgin of the Consolation, during the September festivities.
Monument
Archaeological and interactive museum of Molina de Segura, devoted to the Arab wall and to the history of the municipality, built over the remains of the northern Andalusi wall of Hisn Mulina, with its towers and a triple-bend gate characteristic of Islamic fortifications between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, recovered in excavations from 2004 onwards.
Monument
Former communal oven set in the Castillo quarter, an example of vernacular architecture built with the rammed-earth technique, which preserves the dome of its original Morisco oven; today it is an ethnographic museum devoted to this traditional trade, alongside the Casa del Folclore. The two surviving versions differ over its age: one places it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the other attributes to it a late medieval origin, documented from 1491.
Nature
Semi-naturalised wetland of some 60 hectares set in the surroundings of the hamlet of Campotéjar, originating from old wastewater treatment ponds. It was declared a Ramsar Site of International Importance in 2011 for holding more than 10% of the western Mediterranean population of the white-headed duck, an endangered waterbird.
Nature
The oldest archaeological remains in the district of Molina de Segura, from the Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian culture, including flint and quartzite tools such as side scrapers, end scrapers and denticulate pieces.
Curiosity
Molina de Segura is home to three of Spain's leading confectionery companies, Fini, Vidal and Jake, with combined turnover of more than 790 million euros and over 90,000 square metres of production lines devoted to sweets, gummies and chewing gum.
Curiosity
From 1919 until the end of the 20th century, close to a hundred vegetable canning factories made Molina de Segura a leading name in the sector, and for decades the driving force of the municipality's economy.
Curiosity
Divided into Campotéjar Alta and Baja, this pedanía in Molina's dry-farming country has seen a marked shift in recent decades from dry farming to irrigated crops thanks to the Tagus-Segura transfer.
Curiosity
A district of the municipality of Molina de Segura (Region of Murcia), located about 14 kilometres from the urban centre and surrounded by the sierras of la Espada, de Lúgar and de la Pila. It has around 400 inhabitants, a figure that can multiply in summer to as many as 1000 thanks to rural tourism. Its patron saint is the Virgin Queen of the Angels, in whose honour festivities are held on the first weekend of August. Among the local traditions, caliche is kept alive, a game similar to tuta, deeply rooted among its residents.
Activity
Molina de Segura's main festivities, with concerts, a fair, processions, children's activities, sport, folklore, theatre, guided tours and food events.
Activity
A religious and cultural event with more than 2,500 brotherhood members and 24 processional floats through the old town, including the Living Way of the Cross in Torrealta, the Procession of Silence on Maundy Thursday and the Santo Entierro on Good Friday.
Nature
Hamlet of Molina de Segura in the Segura valley, with salt and gypsum formations formed by the drying up of the Mediterranean Sea. It lies on the river floodplain of the Segura, surrounded by market gardens, at the point where the river Mula flows into the Segura; its most prominent high point is the Cabezo de la Cruz, from where Molina de Segura, Las Torres de Cotillas and Alguazas can be seen. The settlement was populated in the seventeenth century and grew in the eighteenth with residents arriving from nearby towns; its name comes from the district of La Mola, a former watchtower safe from flooding. Its patron saint festival, in honour of the Virgen de los Remedios, is held on the first Sunday of September, and on Holy Wednesday a living Way of the Cross is performed through its streets.
Nature
The wetland of the Ajauque and Rambla Salada is a protected landscape of the Region of Murcia covering 1632 hectares, spread across Fortuna, Molina de Segura, Santomera and Abanilla, with different vegetation environments adapted to salinity and birds characteristic of the area. Water from nearby hills, such as the Charco or the Serretilla, reaches the Ajauque and Salada gullies through a complex drainage network, although it only flows during rain episodes, usually scarce but at times torrential, which is why the Santomera reservoir was built in 1966 to regulate the flow. In some areas groundwater rises to the surface, forming permanent saline pools, an ecosystem now threatened by the spread of the reed bed, which displaces the salt marsh and reduces plant diversity.
Curiosity
Molina de Segura has fifteen hamlets. Three of them, Ribera de Molina, El Llano de Molina and Torrealta, lie in an area of traditional irrigated farmland, in the heart of the Segura valley, while the rest, Albarda, Campotéjar Alta, Campotéjar Baja, Comala, Fenazar, La Espada, La Hornera, La Hurona, Rellano, Romeral and Los Valientes, are spread across the former dry-farming area, outside the valley.
Activity
A pilgrimage festival of 18th-century origin that carries the patron saint of Molina de Segura from her hermitage to the church, opening the patronal festivities.
Monument
A historic hermitage in the town of Molina de Segura, one of the municipality's several minor religious buildings.
Monument
A hermitage in the old town of Molina de Segura linked to the local Semana Santa celebrations.
Monument
The Carlos Soriano Ethnographic Museum occupies the house of the Molina-born lawyer it is named after, in the hamlet of El Llano de Molina (Molina de Segura), next to the local chapel and waterwheel, which dates from 1868. Carlos Soriano bought the estate in 1875, and from then on the farming colony that today makes up El Llano developed; the town council acquired the property in 1999 and the museum opened in 2003. The two-storey house, with a courtyard, preserves on the ground floor archaeological remains such as Argaric boat-shaped mills and Iberian and Roman pottery; upstairs, regional costumes, embroidered clothing and miniatures by local resident Juan de Dios Arnaldos are on display, while the courtyard holds machinery typical of the Murcian huerta's canning industry.
Monument
The Casa Torre Anita, from 1940, is an example of 20th-century architectural heritage in Molina de Segura (Vega Media del Segura, Murcia). It is a house in the Modernist style, the work of the architect Pedro Cerdán, preserved today as one of the town's characteristic civil buildings.
Nature
The castle of Molina de Segura, known as Hişn Mulīna, is an Arab fortress built between the 11th and 13th centuries on a hill about 80 metres high that overlooks the Río Segura vega and visually controlled the area between Archena and Alcantarilla, serving as a gateway and defence for nearby Murcia. The alcazaba, whose surviving remains already belong to the Christian late medieval period, retains a stretch of wall and a large tower, inside which there is a viewpoint offering a panorama of Molina's huerta. The wall, up to 2 metres thick and between 9 and 11 metres high, was built in different phases between the 11th and 13th centuries, with what survives today dating mainly from the first half of the 13th century, built in calicastrado tapial, a rammed-earth technique reinforced with lime.
Nature
A gypsum formation in the outlying village of Comala, of geological interest within the landscape of the Molina de Segura countryside.
Nature
A group of natural caves in the outlying village of Comala, in the district of Molina de Segura.
Curiosity
A hamlet in the countryside of Molina de Segura, with 121 inhabitants in 2020, home to natural areas of interest such as the Cabezo de la Plata and the Cuevas del Tollo. The Yesos de Ulea and Cabezo de la Plata area is protected, and alongside the Cuevas del Tollo there are other karst formations such as the Rincón del Conejo and the Rambla del Carrizalejo. Its economy remains tied to irrigated and rain-fed farming.
Activity
The Living Way of the Cross of Torrealta, a hamlet of Molina de Segura, is held on the night of Holy Wednesday with a re-enactment of the Passion of Christ through the town's streets. The tradition began in 1982, when a group of local residents, on the initiative of the then parish priest José Moreno Martínez, began this re-enactment using the town's own streets as its stage.
Curiosity
A hamlet of Molina de Segura that is home to the Carlos Soriano Ethnographic Museum and its namesake waterwheel, a testament to the traditional huerta. It is the youngest of the municipality's thirteen hamlets, set between the course of the Río Segura and the La Serreta industrial estate, and it emerged in the late 19th century on the initiative of the lawyer Carlos Soriano Salomón, drawing on the colonies law that offered tax advantages to their developers; to this end a chapel, a school and several houses for the huerta families who moved there were built. Today it is the municipality's second most populous hamlet, and it preserves the Casa Museo de Carlos Soriano, located to the west of the town centre, next to the Cartagena–Chinchilla railway line.
Monument
A church of 1907 built in the outlying village of Fenazar, in the countryside of Molina de Segura.
Historical milestone
The oldest documentary reference to Molina de Segura appears in Arab sources that mention the Hisn Mulina, at the start of the 8th century, when the Umayyads entered Murcian lands. It later became known as Mulinat as-Sikka, 'Molina of the Road', for its position on the route that crossed the Segura.
Historical milestone
Muhammad ibn Mardanish, the Wolf King, reinforced in the 12th century the fortress with an outer walled enclosure and had a weir raised at La Algaida to divert water from the Segura towards the irrigated fields. That hydraulic work fixed the irrigation system that Molina inherited after the Castilian conquest.
Historical milestone
Alonso Yáñez Fajardo received Molina in lordship in 1395 and the villa was tied to a lineage that would come to hold the marquisate of los Vélez. In 1535 the marquisate of Molina was created, a title that accompanied the seigneurial dominion until its abolition in the 19th century.
Food and drink
Competition with more than a dozen editions in which the establishments of the municipality present for several weeks a tapa of their own creation submitted to the vote of the public. It serves as an outlet for the market garden produce of the Vega Media.
Activity
Annual event held in the historic centre which in one of its editions was devoted entirely to the huerta and its gastronomy. It brings together workshops, live cookery demonstrations and tastings alongside exhibitions of trades, music and dances of the vega of the Segura.