Calaf

Calaf's origins lie in the frontier wars between Christian and Muslim powers in early medieval Catalonia. After Frankish counts pushed south from Barcelona from 801 onwards, a boundary was drawn along the Llobregat and Cardener rivers. To defend the Muslim side of that line, Berber tribes were settled in the territory, and the name Calaf itself is identified as Berber in origin — one of only two such place names surviving in the high Segarra region.

How the area passed into Christian hands is not entirely clear. It is thought that Count Wilfred the Hairy reconquered the high Segarra in the late ninth century, and the count Sunyer took the wider region in 942. But the frontier remained volatile. In 976, the Muslim military leader Almanzor and his son Abd al-Malik made repeated raids through these lands, devastating the high Segarra and leaving it largely depopulated.

In response, between 1010 and 1015, Count Ramon Borrell and Countess Ermesenda of Carcassonne granted the Bishop of Vic a territory — anciently called Segarra — containing three hills named Calaf, Calafell, and Ferrera. The bishop commissioned a man named Guillem to repopulate and fortify all three. The territory later passed to the church of Osona.

By 1093, a settlement had grown at the foot of Calaf's fortified hilltop, protected by a rammed-earth wall. A market was functioning outside the walls — though it is not formally documented until 1226, when a will mentions houses both inside the town and in the market of Calaf. The town's commercial energy grew enough that Calaf briefly minted its own coins, circulating as far as Manresa, until disputes over the profits between the Viscounts of Cardona and the Bishop of Vic ended the experiment and left the Vic coinage dominant.

Jewish moneylenders are recorded in Calaf between 1361 and 1411. The broader Catalan persecution of Jews does not appear to have reached the town directly, but references to a Jewish community disappear after that period, suggesting conversion, emigration, or eventual expulsion.

In 1465, Calaf was the site of a battle during the Catalan Civil War. Forces loyal to Peter the Constable of Portugal, commanded by Jofre de Rocabertí and Bernat Gilabert II de Cruïlles, were defeated by royalist troops under Fernando de Rebolledo and Joan Ramon Folc IV de Cardona.

The town developed steadily around its castle hill, with the Counts of Cardona granting it privileges that cemented its role as a regional commercial and market centre.

The ruins of Calaf's castle sit at the top of the hill and look out over the whole town below. The Gothic church of Sant Jaume stands in the town itself. On the hillside is the Ermita de Sant Sebastià, built as an act of communal thanksgiving after the town survived the plague epidemic of 1651 — severe, but shorter than in surrounding areas.

Construction began in 1652, finished in 1694, and the chapel was blessed in 1698. Since 1699, townspeople have made a pilgrimage up to it every 1st of May without interruption.