De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 38/88: el Pla d’Urgell (Ponent, Catalonia).
Pla d’Urgell (“Urgell plain”) is a shire in the West of Catalonia, like its neighbouring district Urgell named after the County of Urgell which since the Middle Ages covered much of Western Catalonia.
Like most of inland of Catalonia, it’s a rural shire whose economy depends on agriculture. It consists of 16 municipalities with less than 2,500 inhabitants, many with just a few hundreds. The only exception is its capital city Mollerussa, with almost 15,000.
The landscape is flat, with ponds and some rivers, and most importantly the 19th-century Urgell canal which crosses the whole district and more carrying water from the Segre river to water all the fields.
A typical food from this district is orelletes, a flat round pastry made of fried dough with sugar.
Photos by Jordi Borràs for La Mira, Turisme Pla d’Urgell, Wenceslau Graus, dandovueltasblog, Manelpilar, surtdecasa.cat, Ajuntament Ivars d’Urgell.
