Teruel City

Located at nearly 1,000 metres above sea-level Teruel is known for its remote and mountainous location, its low population and, consequently, its relative isolation from the rest of Spain. A campaign group with the slogan "Teruel exists" was founded in 1999 to press for greater recognition and investment in the city and the province.

The city itself was founded in 1176 by Sancho Sánchez Muñoz and Blasco Garcés Marcilla. In the Middle Ages Teruel had a prominent Jewish community, which enjoyed several privileges. Its members were engaged in commerce and industry, especially in wool-weaving.

It came as an immense shock to the system when the newly invested Kings of Spain, Fernando of Aragón and Isabel of Castille, banished all jews who did not convert and swear fealty to the Spanish Crown, from Spanish soil in the early XV century; an event from which Teruel took many centuries to recover.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Battle of Teruel was one of the bloodiest of the war. The city changed hands several times, first falling to the Republicans and eventually being re-taken by the Nationalists.

In the course of the fighting, Teruel was subjected to heavy artillery and aerial bombardment and the two sides suffered up to 100,000 casualties between them in the three month long battle that turned the course of the War.

The beauty of the city's cultural inheritance, which has some Islamic influence, has been recognised by Unesco, which includes four churches in the World Heritage Site Mudejar Architecture of Aragon, notably the city's ornate cathedral in the Mudejar style.

One of Teruel's best known monuments is very small statue of a bull on top of a tall column, known as El Torico (little bull). On the outskirts of Teruel is Dinopolis Teruel, a combined theme park and museum centred around dinosaurs. Promoted as a Parque paleontológico (paleontological park), it includes a life-size robotic model of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Dinópolis also owns three other museums in the surrounding area, which display the remains of dinosaurs discovered in the region.

More information: http://www.aragonguide.com