Brihuega

Brihuega parish
	Brihuega - castle ruins (castillo) and church of Santa María de la Peña
Basic data
Autonomous Community :	Castile-La Mancha
Province :	Guadalajara
Comarca :	La Alcarria
Coordinates	40 ° 46 ′ N , 2 ° 52 ′ W Coordinates: 40 ° 46 ′ N , 2 ° 52 ′ W
Height :	920 msnm
Area :	296.41 km²
Residents :	2,410 (Jan 1, 2019)
Population density :	8.13 inhabitants / km²
Postal code :	19400
Municipality number ( INE ):	19053
administration
Website :	Brihuega

Brihuega - lavender fields

Brihuega is a small town in central Spain and a municipality ( municipio ) consisting of several villages, hamlets and farmsteads with a total of 2,410 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2019) in the province of Guadalajara in the autonomous region of Castile-La Mancha . In 1973 the historic center was recognized as the Conjunto histórico-artístico . The municipality belongs to the sparsely populated region of the Serranía Celtibérica .

Location and climate

The almost 920 m high place Brihuega is in the north of the southern part of the Iberian plateau ( meseta ) about 1 km northwest of the valley of the Río Tajuña . The provincial capital Guadalajara is approx. 38 km (driving distance) in a southwest direction. The climate in winter is temperate, while in summer it is warm to hot; the rather low amounts of precipitation (approx. 465 mm / year) fall - with the exception of the almost rainless summer months - distributed over the whole year.

Population development

year	1857	1900	1950	2000	2019
Residents	4,373	3,330	2,291	2,895	2,410

Due to the mechanization of agriculture , the abandonment of small farms and the resulting loss of jobs, the population of the community would have declined sharply since the middle of the 20th century ( rural exodus ), if it weren't for several villages (pueblos or aldeas) in the 1960s and 1970s. and hamlets (pedanías) have been incorporated: Archilla , Balconete , Castilmimbre , Fuentes de la Alcarria , Olmeda del Extremo , Pajares , Romancos , Tomellosa , Valdesaz and Villaviciosa de Tajuna as well as Hontanares and Yela .

economy

Agriculture was only possible to a limited extent in the mountainous and rocky landscape; Therefore, the focus was primarily on the livestock industry , whose long-life products (cheese, sausage and wool) could be exchanged or sold with traveling traders. Brihuega was a center of textile production for centuries - a Royal Textile Manufactory (Real Fábrica de Paños) was founded here around the middle of the 18th century, but it was closed again in 1835 as part of the reforms of Finance Minister Juan Álvarez Mendizábal . In the 20th century, the place and its surrounding area developed into a center for lavandin cultivation .

history

Iglesia de San Felipe

The place name indicates Celtic or Celtiberian origins ( briga = "fortress"); The name Castrum Brioca has been handed down from Roman times . In the 8th century, the Arabs and Moors took over rule, which was only established in the second half of the 11th century by King Alfonso VI. could be driven out of the region again by León ( reconquista ) . Alfonso VI handed over the manorial rule (señorio) over the place and its surroundings to the bishops of Toledo , which he had conquered in 1085. In 1215, Henry I granted the city the privilege of holding an annual fair ; the city developed into an important center for the manufacture of fabrics . Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (offic. 1210–1247) granted the place further privileges ( foros ) in 1242 ; the founding of the three late Romanesque churches go back to him. During the War of the Spanish Succession , the city was in December 1710 by the under the command of Field Marshal Louis Joseph de Bourbon standing artillery Philip V bombed.

Attractions

Brihuega - Iglesia de San Miguel

Brihuega - Portal of the Church of Santa María de la Peña

Real Fábrica de Paños

Yela - Romanesque church

The center of the village is the Plaza del Coso, surrounded by houses with pillars . Here is also the modern town hall (ayuntamiento) with its attached clock tower , which ends in a final iron bell cage.

Approx. 100 m to the east are the Cuevas árabes , an underground passage and cave labyrinth that was probably created in the 10th and 11th centuries, which was later used as a storage room for wine and other supplies due to its uniform temperature.

The three-aisled late Romanesque Iglesia de San Miguel with its stepped portal is about 100 m to the southwest. Its three naves are covered by a modern steel roof structure , as the original vaults collapsed during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and carried away part of the south aisle. The church was fundamentally restored in 1979.

Only about 50 m to the south are the ruins of the Castillo de la Peña Bermeja with the remains of the former city wall (muralla) . A fortress (kasbah) probably stood here as early as the Moorish era, but the complex was renewed after the city was conquered by the Christians. Finally, at the beginning of the 13th century, a palace of the Archbishops of Toledo was built , parts of the outer walls of which are still preserved.

Very close to the built in the early 13th century by the Archbishop of Toledo church is Santa María de la Peña with its ornate late Romanesque stepped portal with a hanging keystone ( pendant vault ) and an overlying quatrefoil . The three-aisled church interior clearly shows Romanesque features; only the rib vaults point to the Gothic . In the rock below the church there is a grotto with a replica of the venerated Black Madonna .

The washhouse (lavadero) La Blanquina , which is unusually located in the center of the village, is remarkably spacious with its attached outdoor fountain with 12 tubes.

The rest of a court column (rollo or picota) stands on a plinth in a small green area .

The ring-shaped building of the former Real Fábrica de Paños , built around 1755, was acquired in 1840 by an entrepreneur who continued the textile production with uniform fabrics etc. The textile factory existed until the outbreak of the civil war (1936). The building complex with its attached garden is located on the eastern edge of today's city.

Immediately next to it is part of the Convento de San José , founded by the Franciscan order in 1619 , which today houses the city museum (Museo de Brihuega) .

In the northern part of the old town is the three-aisled Romanesque Iglesia de San Felipe with its protruding stepped portals adorned with diamond rods in the west and south. The round window above the west portal is filled with a six-pointed tracery star. After a fire in 1904, the interior of the church was covered with new wooden roof trusses. The convexly curved triangular window above the arch to the apse is unusual.

Yela

The Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Llanos in the hamlet of Yela, which has only about 10 inhabitants , has a Romanesque south porch (portico) with double columns ; it also has a bell gable (espadaña) with a bell chamber behind it. A beautiful step portal leads into the interior of the nave, which has been redesigned and covered by a wooden ceiling .

Others

Approx. 4 km south of the small town, the Hare Krishna sect set up an ashram in a former manor (finca) under the name Nuevo Vraja Mandala in 1979 .

literature

Antonio Herrera Casado: Brihuega, la roca del Tajuña . Aache Ediciones, Guadalajara 1995, ISBN 84-87743-57-9 (Spanish, limited preview in Google book search).

Web links

Commons : Brihuega - collection of images, videos and audio files

Brihuega and surroundings, churches - photos + information (arteguias, Spanish)
Brihuega, tourism site - photos + information (Spanish)

Individual evidence

[1] Cifras oficiales de población resultantes de la revisión del Padrón municipal a 1 de enero . Population statistics from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (population update).

[2] Brihuega - climate tables

[3] Brihuega - population development

[4] Brihuega -Lavandin

[5] Brihuega - Lavandin

[6] Brihuega story

[7] Brihuega - Cuevas Árabes

[8] Brihuega - Castillo

[9] Brihuega - Santa María de la Peña

[10] Brihuega - Santa María de la Peña

[11] Brihuega - well and wash house

[12] Brihuega - court column (roller blind)

[13] Brihuega - textile factory

[14] Brihuega - Convento de San José

[15] Brihuega - City Museum

[16] Brihuega - San Felipe

[17] Jump up ↑ Yela Church

[18] Brihuega - Ashram