#borriana

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 57/88: la Plana Baixa (Castelló, Valencian Country).

Plana Baixa is a coastal shire in the north of the Valencian Country.

Its capital city is Borriana, which served as an important capital during the Christian conquest of the peninsula in the 1230s (part of what you might know as “the Reconquista”, though this is not a historically accurate term).

In 1525, a new law ordered the population to convert to Catholicism, and the rural valley of inland Plana Baixa was the setting of a revolt by the Muslim population who wanted to keep their religion and customs that they had kept for all those centuries. The revolt was put down by the Valencian army, which was called as a crusade. A few years later, in 1609, the Moorish population of the Kingdom of Valencia were faced with the edict to either convert to Christianity or leave their homeland, one of the most tragic events in our history.

Nowadays, Plana Baixa is known for its orange and mandarine fields as well as the Coves de Sant Josep, a group of caves and underground galleries that form the longest navigable underground river in Europe.

Casa Piera, Burriana, Province of Castellón, Valencian Community, Spain,