Frías

The site has been used as an Ebro crossing since Roman times, and the town first appears in the written record in 867, during the repopulation of lands taken back from Muslim rule. Around the turn of the eleventh century it passed through the hands of Count Sancho García before becoming part of the Kingdom of Pamplona-Nájera under Sancho III. In 1202 Alfonso VIII granted Frías the Fuero de Logroño, a legal charter that boosted its independence and economic life — the town grew to include a Jewish quarter.

In 1435 King Juan II raised Frías to the status of a city, but eleven years later traded it to Pedro Fernández de Velasco, Count of Haro, in exchange for Peñafiel. The relationship soured as the count stripped away local rights, and in 1450 his men besieged the town for two months. The memory of that standoff is kept alive each year in the Fiesta del Capitán. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs created the Duchy of Frías and granted it to the Velasco family, under whose lordship the town remained until the end of the Old Regime.

The medieval core of Frías is a protected historic ensemble and its original urban layout survives largely intact. The houses — two or three storeys, some with wine cellars — lean against one another along streets that climb the rock in tiers. Several buildings literally overhang the cliff. Construction is timber-framed with tufa stone walls, and the upper floors open onto a sunny gallery. At the summit stand the Velasco castle and the church of San Vicente. A town wall, now partial, originally had three gates; two remain — the Puerta del Postigo and the Puerta de Medina.

The old Jewish quarter, whose significance only became clear in recent decades, centred on the streets of El Convenio, La Judería and Candonga. The Convent of Santa María de Vadillo, founded in 1219, combined Gothic and Renaissance elements and served at various points as a hospital; after being abandoned following the nineteenth-century Mendizábal disentailments it has been partly restored, with its chapel now a museum space dedicated to music. The Gothic church of San Vitores, built between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, has served at different times as a hermitage, a grain store, and — after restoration — a place of worship again. A medieval wash house, well preserved, stands beside the Molinar river at the start of the road to Tobera.