By Ines Keane
Three sources, three different heights. Wikipedia puts Albarracín at 1,182 metres above sea level. A travel site, Spainseeker, says 1,181. A history blog, medieval.eu, says 1,170. They are all within a dozen metres of each other, which is close enough to tell you the town sits high in the hills of the province of Teruel in Aragon, and far enough apart that we will not choose one. If a number matters to you, check it against a survey.
A name from a family
The name comes from a dynasty. Wikipedia says the town takes its name from the Banu Razin, the family who ruled here when the area was one of the small Muslim kingdoms, the taifas, that formed as central power broke up. The medieval.eu blog agrees on the taifa setting and adds that the place was already fortified by the seventh century, with the main fortification dating to the tenth. We give the blog’s dates as the blog’s, because it is a history blog and not an archive.
A lordship of its own
Wikipedia describes a lordship of Albarracín that lasted from 1167 to 1300 under Pedro Ruiz de Azagra, with its own ruler and a position between larger neighbours. The medieval.eu blog places the change of power at about 1170. These dates are close but they are not the same, and they probably describe different moments in the same process. Our reading: one source is dating the start of the lordship, the other the shift of control. That is our inference and neither source says it.
Then comes the part where the two sources disagree with each other, and the blog disagrees with itself. Wikipedia says Peter III of Aragon conquered the town in 1284 and that it was formally incorporated into the Crown of Aragon in 1300. The blog, in one passage, gives 1284 for the conquest, and in another gives a date after 1300. We list both and decline to settle it. The Wikipedia pair of 1284 and 1300 is the one we lean on, with the label attached.
Towers, walls and a cathedral
The Torre del Andador is a named tower in two of our sources. Medieval.eu dates it to the eleventh century, and Wikipedia names it as one of the town’s main monuments. The same blog says the wall that visitors walk beside today was largely rebuilt by the kings of Aragon in the late Middle Ages, which means the line of the wall is old but the stone you see is not all of one date.
The cathedral gets a date from the blog: the end of the twelfth century, with an altarpiece of 1566. Spainseeker, by contrast, is not consistent about the cathedral’s style within one page, so we have not used its description. The blog also mentions a house of the Dolz de Espejo family, fifteenth century, which is the only private building it dates.
Why the town looks the way it does
Spainseeker describes pink-hued buildings, and that is the detail the page leads with. It is a travel site, so it gives us the colour and not the cause. We have not found a source in this research that explains the pink, and we will not guess at it.
Recognition
Wikipedia says the whole town was declared a national monument on 22 June 1961. It adds that Albarracín received the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts in 1996. Both are statements of official status. They are not statements about how busy the streets are, and we say nothing about that.
Dates in order
- Seventh century: already fortified, according to the medieval.eu blog.
- Tenth century: main fortification, according to the same blog.
- Eleventh century: Torre del Andador, according to the same blog.
- 1167 to 1300: the lordship of Albarracín under Pedro Ruiz de Azagra, according to Wikipedia.
- About 1170: shift of control, according to the blog.
- End of the twelfth century: the cathedral, according to the blog.
- 1284: conquest by Peter III, according to Wikipedia.
- 1300: formal incorporation into the Crown of Aragon, according to Wikipedia.
- Fifteenth century: the Dolz de Espejo house, according to the blog.
- 1566: the cathedral altarpiece, according to the blog.
- 22 June 1961: national monument, according to Wikipedia.
- 1996: Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts, according to Wikipedia.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia anyone can edit. Medieval.eu is a history blog. Spainseeker is a travel site. None of them is a municipal or academic source, and we say so. A visit-planning page from the town hall would be a better source for anything practical, and we have deliberately left out opening hours, entry costs and transport.
What we left out
We left out the town’s twentieth-century wartime history, which is a long subject and belongs in a piece of its own. We left out the heights of every peak and the length of the walls, since the sources we could read did not agree or did not say.
Roam first. Shop later.