Illueca

Illueca appears in medieval documents under earlier names — Illicata and Illoca — and after the Reconquista passed through several hands before becoming a barony under Jaime I, who granted it to the converted son of the last Moorish king of Mallorca. From 1250 to 1343 the barony was held by that family, after which it passed by inheritance to María Pérez de Gotor, who married into the Luna dynasty. The Lunas would control the castle for roughly the next two centuries.

The most famous figure to emerge from this lineage was Pedro de Luna y Gotor, born here in 1328, who became Benedict XIII — the Aragonese pope at the centre of the Great Western Schism.

Medieval Illueca was notably mixed. The Jalón valley had one of the highest proportions of Muslim population in the Kingdom of Aragón, and a documented Jewish community coexisted alongside Christians from at least 1424. The three communities shared civic governance, deliberating together without apparent rigid separation by neighbourhood or law.

The Luna family was recognised as one of Aragón's eight great noble houses in 1528, eventually acquiring the title Count of Morata. The lordship changed hands several more times before the castle was eventually donated to the town.

The Castle-Palace of Pope Luna sits at the highest point of the town on a rocky spur. Declared a national monument in 1931 and a listed cultural asset in 1985, it is a long rectangular structure built in masonry and brick. Because construction stretched across several periods, the building shows three distinct architectural styles: mudéjar, Renaissance and baroque.

Inside, the most remarkable spaces include the Sala Dorada, which served as the ceremonial reception room, and the Sala de la Alcoba, traditionally identified as the birthplace of Benedict XIII. Both rooms are covered with polychrome mudéjar carved timber ceilings. Elsewhere, baroque-mudéjar plasterwork lines several rooms, and two halls retain gothic-mudéjar friezes of decorative circles. The Mausoleum Room, the castle's former chapel, is where the pope's remains once rested.

The town also has the Baroque Casa Palacio de los Saldaña, a three-storey palace with a rounded archway entrance framed by pilasters and interior altarpieces dating from the 17th to 18th centuries. Two hermitages complete the picture: the Ermita de San Babil, the patron saint's chapel, decorated with painted ceilings of foliage, cherubs and cornucopias; and the Ermita de San Ildefonso, set on a plateau above the Calvary.