Daroca

Daroca's origins may reach back to a Celtiberian settlement called Darek, and the Romans later built a fort here to guard the road linking Zaragoza with Valencia. The first written record dates to 837, when the town was already a significant place in the north of al-Andalus, held by the Arab Banu al-Muhayir family. The Arabs called it Calat-Darawca and held it for around four centuries until Alfonso I of Aragón took it in 1120.

Under Ramón Berenguer IV the town received its own legal code and became capital of the Community of Daroca, a body with real military and political weight across medieval Aragón. It hosted royal assemblies with Pedro II, Jaime I, Jaime II and Pedro IV, several of which settled peace terms with Castile. In 1248 Jaime I formally constituted the surrounding villages as a separate Community, with their own officials and eventually their own representation in the Aragonese courts.

Later centuries brought repeated upheaval. Daroca backed the Austrian claimant in the War of Succession, which ended roughly six centuries of municipal autonomy when Philip V reorganised local government. Napoleon's troops entered in June 1808; the town was not freed until August 1813. Carlist forces occupied it three times during the 19th century. A gradual economic recovery followed, driven by agriculture and trade, and in 1902 a railway line from Calatayud to Valencia brought a station of its own.

Four medieval churches give Daroca its architectural spine. Santa María de los Sagrados Corporales, a basilica since 1890, began as a Romanesque building and was expanded over successive centuries to house the relic of the Sagrados Corporales. Inside, the chapel dedicated to that relic contains a notable jubé retable, and the church also holds a Baroque high altar, a fine organ spanning several centuries of work, and a parish museum. Outside, the Romanesque apse and the old Puerta del Perdón survive.

San Juan Bautista was built on the foundations of a mosque. Heavily restored inside, it keeps its original apse, which is protected as a cultural monument for being the earliest surviving example of the transition from Romanesque to Aragonese Mudéjar. Its polylobed arch is the standout feature. San Miguel Arcángel is considered the purest example of Romanesque architecture in Daroca, also a protected monument; restoration removed later Baroque decoration to reveal the original fabric, preserving the choir and the Heredia chapel. Santo Domingo de Silos was badly damaged by fire in 1735; what survived — the Romanesque-Gothic apse and the tower — is listed as the earliest known example of Mudéjar art in a Christian bell tower, with glazed ceramic details and arches in a purely Islamic tradition.

Two civic works deserve equal attention. The Fuente de los Veinte Caños, built in 1639, is one of very few monumental fountains preserved in Aragón. Its twenty water spouts emerge from worn stone faces arranged between Mannerist pilasters, and it was designed to form a triumphal entrance to the town alongside the Puerta Baja. La Mina, constructed between 1555 and 1560, is a 600-metre tunnel, six metres wide and up to eight metres high, driven through the hill of San Jorge beside the town. It was built to divert the flash floods that regularly tore down the Calle Mayor — the town's main street follows the bottom of a ravine — and carried off the gates of the Puerta Baja as far as the river Jiloca.