Sariñena

People have lived around Sariñena since the Bronze Age, and archaeological sites scattered across the area span from around 2250 BC through the pre-Roman Iron Age. The town was taken from Muslim rule in 1100 by the troops of King Pedro I and shortly afterwards given as a tenancy to Fortún Sánchez. Alfonso I drew up his second testament here shortly before his death; after the town was lost, Ramón Berenguer IV recovered it. Alfonso II granted Sariñena its founding charter in October 1170, giving settlers the fueros of Zaragoza and rights to build irrigation channels on the Alcanadre and Isuela rivers. In 1381 it received the privilege of holding fairs and markets, and in 1422 Queen María authorised the townspeople to build a bridge over the Alcanadre and charge tolls for its use.

During the Spanish Civil War, Sariñena's airfield was the Republican side's main military aerodrome on the Aragonese front, most active in the summer and autumn of 1936. After Franco's forces occupied it in March 1938, both the Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria were based there. Today the town functions as a service hub for the wider comarca, with livestock and agricultural exports and growing tourism centred on the lagoon, the monastery, and the Los Monegros landscape.

The parish church of San Salvador is a late Baroque building constructed from 1796 on the site of an earlier church, which had itself been built over a mosque and its minaret. Work stopped in 1808 and did not resume for a decade. The church has a Latin cross plan with a straight apse; the tower on the north side is a single square body with semicircular bell openings.

The Cartuja de Nuestra Señora de las Fuentes, also known as the Cartuja de los Monegros, was the first Carthusian monastery founded in the Kingdom of Aragón, established in 1507 by Beatriz de Luna and Blasco de Alagón. The monks abandoned it in 1563 for the Aula Dei monastery in Zaragoza. The complex is notable for its plain volumes and lack of ornamentation; its church contains mural paintings by Fray Manuel Bayeu, Goya's brother-in-law.

The Ermita de Santiago sits on a promontory above the Alcanadre river. It is a late Romanesque church of whitewashed ashlar with a rectangular nave of four bays, traditionally said to have been founded by Saint Euphrasius, a disciple of the apostle. A few metres downstream are the remains of a medieval bridge that carried one of the branches of the Camino de Santiago.

Casa La Miguela, a typical example of Aragonese civil architecture in sandstone and brick, houses the Museo de la Laguna across three areas: an ethnological room on the ground floor, a lagoon room on the first floor, and a temporary exhibition space above. The Fuente de Villanueva, beside the old town wall, is one of the oldest structures in the municipality, a classic two-spout fountain under an arch with a drinking trough.

The Laguna de Sariñena covers 206 hectares and reaches a maximum depth of 2.35 metres. Originally a shallow saltwater endorheic lake, irrigation runoff has made it permanent and fresh. It is now one of the ten largest lakes in Spain and a declared Wildlife Refuge. More than 200 bird species have been recorded there in the last fifteen years, making it one of Aragón's best sites for watching waterbirds.