#comarques

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 67/88: el Comtat (Central Valencian Country).

Comtat (meaning "County") is a rural district in the Valencian Country. The district consists of the Serpis river's valley, which is surrounded by mountain ranges that exceed the 1,000 metres in altitude. Its capital city is Cocentaina. Besides Cocentaina and Muro d'Alcoi, all other towns have a few hundred inhabitants, some less than a hundred.

Human life in Comtat has a long history. There are many archaeological sites from Prehistory, ever since the Paleolithic. Comtat also has Cova de l'Or, one of the most important Neolithic archaeological site in the Valencian Country. The cave was inhabited around the year 5,600 BC, which archaeologists have been able to date through the remains of carbonized cereals left behind by the community. In the cave, archaeologists also found decorated pottery, tools made of stone and bone, and animal bones. Their decoration style seems to indicate that this community or other communities of their same culture were the authors of the particular Pla de Petracos wall paintings.

In Comtat, you'll also find the Barranc de l'Encantada, the ravine famous for its legend (I posted it here).

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 64/88: la Safor (Central Valencian Country).

La Safor is a costal shire whose capital city is Gandia, where the famous Borgia family had their palace. The Borgia family are amongst the most famous Valencians in history and some of its memebers are some of the most famous people in the Renaissance. Two of them became Popes (Callixtus III and Alexander VI), one was proclaimed a saint (Saint Francis Borgia), and the rivalries of Renaissance Rome created all sorts of rumours and dark stories about them that are still told nowadays in books, TV shows, and movies.

There are many other interesting historical places, like the Valldigna Monastery (built in Gothic and Baroque style between the 14th and 18th centuries), the Sant Jeroni de Cotalba Monastery (built in Renaissance style in the 15th century), 16th-century watchtowers to watch out for pirates, historical towns, and archaeological remains of castles.

La Safor is known for its delicious food, including fideuà (noodles casserole with seafood), figatells (similar to a burger made of pork liver), shrimp with chards, or coca de dacsa (corn flatbread similar to a small Mexican tortilla, which is filled with different ingredients, most commonly tuna, egg, tomato, anchovies, sardines, fried spinach...), among others.

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 55/88: l’Alcalatén (Castelló, Valencian Country).

Alcalatén is a shire in the north of the Valencian Country. Its capital city is l’Alcora.

Though Bronze Age, Ancient Iberian and Roman archaeological remains have been found, evidence suggests this area had a very low population until the Islamic rule during the Middle Ages. It’s at that moment that most towns were founded, as you can see in many of their names. The name of the district, Alcalatén, also comes from Arabic and it means “the two castles”.

Its mountainous landscape and strategic situation, in the way between Aragon and the sea, has made Alcalatén a hiding spot for bandits and guerrilla fighters. In the early 18th century, the maulets and miquelets (voluntary militia formed by farmers to fight against the Spanish-French invasion in the War of Spanish Succession) took refuge from persecution in these mountains after losing the war. In the 19th century, the guerrilla fighters also fought against the Napoleonic invasion, when the French army was pillaging and leaving a trace of destruction in the villages.

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 54/88: Alt Maestrat (Castelló, Valencian Country).

Alt Maestrat (meaning “High Maestrat”, in reference to the territories ruled by the Grand Master of the Templar Knights, Knights Hospitaller and Order of Montesa) is a shire in the north of the Valencian Country. Its capital city is Albocàsser.

Its landscape is characteristic for its cliffs and mountains, dry land and small towns dedicated to farming. The district’s inhabitants shaped the hilly surface in order to be able to use it for agriculture by building terraces with the traditional dry stone method.

Alt Maestrat has a low population but a long history, including archaeological remains dating back to Prehistory and, more recently, the effects of the Nazi aviation’s Condor Legion, who heavily bombed the villages of Alt Maestrat during the Spanish Civil War, in which Nazi Germany helped the fascist Spanish forces and tried out many weapons and war strategies against civilians that it would later use in the Second World War.

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 65/88: la Costera (Central Valencian Country).

La Costera is a shire whose capital city is Xàtiva.

The inhabitants of Xàtiva are known with the nickname "socarrats" (which means "burned"). Xàtiva had been the main city in this area for a very long time, it had officially been given the title of city in the year 1347 and by the 1700s it was the second most populated city in all the Kingdom of València (second only to València itself). But its inhabitants had to face a particular cruelty from king Philip V.

During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1715), the Castillian (Spanish) army militarily occupied the Kingdoms of València, Aragon, Catalonia, and Mallorca. The invader king, Philip V, ended their independence and incorporated them by "right of conquest" to Spain, abolishing their historical forms of government and historical laws, forbidding the use of the Catalan-Valencian language in all official settings, imposing the use of Spanish, forbid many of our culture's holidays, closed down universities, publicly executed thousands and inflicted public humiliations and exile on more, and imposed extremely high taxes to pay for their homeland's militarization. At that moment, the Spanish army started a period that historians have labelled "military terrorism", where they did everything in their hand to impose a state of terror and psychological punishment on the conquered population. Among the punishments, there were massacres, mass deportations, and public torture. More than 30 Catalan towns and cities were burned to the ground, the larger of which was Xàtiva.

The people of Xàtiva had resisted the advancement of the Bourbon army (the Castillian and French armies) but in the end they couldn't resist the much superior artillery brought from France. As a punishment for their resistance, the whole city was set on fire and burned to the ground, the city's name was changed from Xàtiva to the Spanish name "Nueva Colonia de San Felipe" ("New Colony of Saint Philip"), many of its inhabitants were killed and had all their belongings taken (they were sentenced to death without a trial; the Spanish army even killed 73 people -many of whom were women and children- who were praying in a church all at once) and more than 300 Xativan families were deported to Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Philip V's orders were: "demolish all of Xàtiva, don't leave any building standing, not even the churches". They also destroyed all the literary and artistic works as well as historical documents that were made by these people he considered rebels. Instead, they built a monument "designed to commemorate the future ages of the chastisement of rebellious people".

The fire that consumed this big city and burned it to the ground, an event amplified by the Spanish Bourbonic propaganda as a way of saying "look what happens to rebels: submit and don't dare to try any resistance", has remained in the memory of the people of this area. For this reason, the inhabitants of Xàtiva are still jokingly called "burned ones". This is referenced in the iconic Valencian traditional song Malaguenya de Barxeta, with the line "I come from the heart of the Costera, the town of the burned ones, where my Valencian Country is reborn from the ashes" (vinc del cor de la Costera / del poble dels socarrats. / D'allà on renaix de les cendres / el meu País Valencià.)

Besides the tragic history of the Xàtiva Extermination, the Costera shire has many more historical sites. It's also interesting to highlight the Montesa castle, built by the Order of Montesa (the successors of the Knights Templar); as well as the Ancient Iberian site of La Bastida de les Alcusses (5th-4th centuries BC).

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 60/88: l’Horta Nord (València, Valencian Country).

Horta Nord (“North Orchard”) is one of the four shires in which the historical Horta de València area is divided nowadays. The others are Horta Sud (south), Horta Oest (west) and the city of València.

The town of Alboraia, located here, is known as the cradle of orxata, the sweet summer drink based on tiger-nut. Though nowadays orxata is the most popular summer drink in all of the Catalan Countries, it’s believed to originate here centuries ago, and Alboraia still proudly proclaims that the orxata they make with the tiger-nuts they grow in the area is the best one in the world. They usually accompany the drink with fartons, elongated bread-based sweets glazed with sugar.

De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 62/88: València (València, Valencian Country).

València is the capital city of the Valencian Country, and has its own shire that includes the city with all its neighbourhoods, each one with their own personality, as well as the nearest towns that are associated to the city.

The city was founded as a Roman colony in the year 138 BC, named Valentia Edetanorum. The city flourished after the Islamic conquest of the 8th century AD, re-named Balansiya (بلنسية). With the centuries, the inhabitants joined the dominant Arabic culture and replaced Latin and Christianity for Arabic and Islam, as well as the Islamic culture. Between the years 1010 and 1238 it was the capital city of the Moorish kingdom Taifa of Balansiya, until it was conquered by Catalonia-Aragon on October 9th 1238. Valencians celebrate October 9th as the day of foundation of the Valencian people, who followed a similar process to the previous adoption of Arabic culture but this time for the Catalan one, together with Christianity.

In the Late Middle Ages, València (at this point already with its current name in Catalan) was the capital city of the Kingdom of València, one of the members of the Catalano-Aragonese confederacy whose borders align almost perfectly with nowaday’s Valencian Country. As capital of the Kingdom of València, the city had its golden periods thanks to its participation in Mediterranean commerce.

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.