Prades

The Arabs built a castle here, which was fortified in 1090 to block the advance of Ramón Berenguer III's troops. It surrendered in 1153, and six years later Ramón Berenguer IV granted the town a charter of settlement. By 1170 the last Saracens sheltering in the surrounding mountains had been expelled. In 1193, Alfonso II of Aragon — taking refuge in the town to escape a plague epidemic — appointed Pere de Déu as its mayor. By 1200, Prades already had its own market, a sign of the town's growing importance.

The County of Prades was a substantial territory. It covered 1,157 km² and included the Barony of Entença along with numerous surrounding villages, its lands spreading across what are now the regions of Bajo Campo, El Priorato, and Alto Campo. In the early 15th century the county passed to Infante Ramón Berenguer, son of James II of Aragon and Blanche of Naples, along with the Lordship of Elche. In 1414 it was joined to the Duchy of Cardona, and later to that of Ampurias. Following the marriage of Catalina de Aragón to Juan de la Cerda in 1663, the county came under the Dukes of Medinaceli, who retain the title of Dukes of Prades to this day, even though seigneurial rights ended in 1835.

Prades was the birthplace of the Renaissance composer Mateo Flecha the Elder. During the First Carlist War it served as the headquarters of Rafael Tristany, after which the town was attacked, looted, and its defenders executed. The Third Carlist War produced another local figure — a teenage fighter known as the Nen de Prades, who raised and led his own unit and died before the age of twenty.

The parish church of Santa María is Gothic in structure — a single nave — with a Renaissance façade. Beside one of its side doors stands an old boundary cross. Of the town's medieval walls, only fragments survive, along with two of the original arched gateways.

The arcaded main square is dominated by a Renaissance fountain considered notable enough to have been reproduced in Barcelona's Poble Espanyol. About two kilometres from the centre, the hermitage of the Virgen de l'Abellera dates from 1570, with its bell tower added in 1578. A statue of the Virgin destroyed in 1936 was replaced in 1940 with a marble reproduction carved from stone quarried at Sarral.