Alhama de Aragón

Alhama de Aragón, situated at the confluence of history and hydrothermal bounty, presents itself as a spa town of 31.11 square kilometres in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain; it lies on the gently coursing Jalón River, itself a tributary of the Ebro, and sustains a year-round population of approximately 925 inhabitants (INE 2024), at an elevation of 664 metres above sea level.

The origins of Alhama de Aragón extend into antiquity, when the Romans, drawn by the curative quality of its thermal springs, designated the settlement Aquae Bilbilitanorum in honour of nearby Augusta Bilbilis (modern Calatayud). Prior even to that appellation, Martial the Bilbilitan poet alluded to the pre-Roman Congedus in verse that captures both the terrain’s metamorphic rock and the warmth of its waters; his lines evoke “the warm Congedus” and “the calm lakes of the Nymphs,” thereby granting posterity a glimpse of a region whose thermal virtues would secure its renown for millennia (Martial, Epigrams). During the Roman Empire, the Antonine Itinerary (A-25) codified its place on the imperial road network, and nineteenth-century observers such as Cea Bermúdez reported vestiges of Roman bathing edifices, reinforcing the inference that this enclave was instrumental in the network of health resorts that dotted the Iberian Peninsula.

Subsequent to the fall of Rome, the town’s Arabic custodians re-christened it Al-Hammam, “the baths,” a testament to the uninterrupted centrality of its springs. The Baño del Moro and the Baño de la Mora—two rock-hewn pools from which thermal water yet flows—linger as living relics of that epoch. In 1070, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, “El Cid Campeador,” briefly wrested the fortress from Moorish control; this episode is immortalized in the Poem of My Cid, wherein the hero’s passage “in front of Alhama” is chronicled as he descends the gorge. Yet the town reverted to Moorish hands until Alfonso I of Aragon’s reconquest in 1122. Thereafter, for more than two centuries, Alhama de Aragón oscillated between the crowns of Castile and Aragon—most notably during the War of the Two Pedros (1361–1366) and through protracted dynastic strife—before its definitive incorporation into the Crown of Aragon by 1457.

The seventeenth century bequeathed to Alhama de Aragón its principal ecclesiastical monument, the Church of the Nativity of Our Lady, a Baroque edifice conceived in adobe brick and later augmented in 1714. Its square-planch tower, rendered in Mudéjar fashion with ashlar at its base and brick above, presides over a single nave flanked by chapels between flying buttresses; lunettes punctuate the vaulting, while the transept culminates in a hemispherical dome adorned with plasterwork in the Mudéjar tradition—a convergence of Gothic lineage and Islamic decorative art that bespeaks the town’s liminal identity.

The castle, perched atop Serratilla hill on the town’s periphery, is of modest scale yet rich in stratified chronology. Its oval-shaped enclosure, adapted to rocky terrain, retains only the central keep and fragments of its defensive curtain. Medieval construction phases trace back to the twelfth century, while its surviving tower is likely a fourteenth-century addition—tangible proof of the military exigencies that defined frontier life between Christian and Muslim realms.

In the nineteenth century, the vaulted promise of Alhama’s thermal springs was harnessed commercially, a development catalogued by Pascual Madoz in his 1845 Geographical-Statistical-Historical Dictionary of Spain. He recorded “thirty or forty” mineral springs, each discharging through bronze pipes into communal basins, and noted the town’s 120 houses arrayed along two principal streets and three plazas. Madoz also chronicled the catastrophic flood of October 1842, when the Jalón surged nearly 3.5 yards above its banks for two days, an event that underscored both the town’s riverine susceptibility and its resolute inhabitants.

Rail connectivity to regional hubs—Arcos de Jalón and Calatayud—emerged in tandem with Spain’s expanding railway network; at Calatayud, passengers may transfer to high-speed AVE trains bound for Madrid or Barcelona. Road access follows the Nordeste Highway between kilometre markers 206 and 208, with a detour off the N-II motorway directing travellers to the Termas Pallarés Spa resort. A weekday bus service links Calatayud and Alhama, underscoring the town’s continued integration into Aragon’s transport lattice.

The thermal heritage endures at Balneario Termas Pallarés, where a unique open-air lake of nearly two hectares maintains a constant 34 °C temperature throughout the seasons; its crystalline expanse—complete with two islands—results from tectonic fractures that channel subterranean heat into the Jalón valley. Four balnearios operate within the municipality, offering therapeutic immersion in waters enriched with bicarbonate, calcium, nitrogen, arsenic and, by virtue of natural decay processes, low-level radioactivity. Local lore credits these springs with remedial efficacy extending beyond musculoskeletal ailments to respiratory and dermatological conditions.

Agriculture remains a complementary pillar of Alhama’s economy. Fertile orchards yield apples and myriad fruits, while vineyards contribute to the storied Denominación de Origen Calatayud, notably through wines cultivated at nearby Bodegas Langa and Cariñena estates. Arable plots produce wheat, sustaining traditional dishes such as migas—breadcrumbs sautéed with garlic and pork lardoons—and ternasco a la pastora, wherein young lamb is braised with autumnal herbs. Cod—locally known as bacalao zaragozano—is stewed with potatoes in a hearty preparation emblematic of Aragonese culinary resourcefulness. Confectionery artisans fashion adoquines, tortas escaldadas and almojábanas, but none rival the baturro biscuits, crisp and subtly sweet, which serve as the town’s culinary signature.

Industrial diversification arrived in the late twentieth century with the establishment of ZALUX, a manufacturer of waterproof luminaires that, since 2012, has extended into LED technology. Employing nearly three hundred personnel, ZALUX exports to more than eighty countries as part of the German TRILUX Group, thereby juxtaposing Alhama’s artisanal past with advanced manufacturing. Yet pottery—once the town’s most venerable craft—teeters on the brink of extinction, reliant upon the impetus of a new generation to perpetuate its wheel-thrown vessels and lustrous glazes.

Alhama de Aragón’s environs further reward the inquisitive traveller. To the south-west, at a distance of some 25 kilometres, the Cistercian abbey of Monasterio de Piedra sits amid water gardens threaded by cascading falls and cavernous grottoes. To the north-east, at roughly 35 kilometres, lies Calatayud, distinguished by its Mudéjar church towers—an architectural dialogue between Christian form and Islamic ornamentation that echoes the stylistic interplay found within Alhama itself. Beyond these, the Roman city of Medinaceli reveals its medieval walls and castle, and the Monastery of Santa María de Huerta stands as a testament to the evolution of medieval ecclesiastical architecture.

In 1957, Alhama de Aragón provided the setting for Luis García Berlanga’s film Los jueves, milagro, starring Richard Basehart; under the guise of Fuentecilla, local entrepreneurs staged weekly apparitions of San Dimas to revitalize spa visitation. This cinematic episode underscores the town’s perennial reliance on its springs and the enterprising spirit of its denizens. During the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist forces swiftly occupied the town, and in the Second World War, Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war found temporary internment within its bounds, a chapter that testifies to Alhama’s geopolitical pivot at Europe’s southern periphery.

Today, Alhama de Aragón presents as a living palimpsest, where Roman stone, Moorish masonry and Baroque stucco coexist amid orchards and balnearios. Its streets—narrow, winding and shaded by plane trees—reveal fine examples of popular architecture, among them the town hall with its eclectic two-storey façade, symmetrical save for a central section of three semicircular arches at ground level. Visitors sense the passage of epochs in every fountain basin and façetal carving; each element contributes to an immersive tableau in which the town’s thermal waters remain its perennial lifeblood.

In this way, Alhama de Aragón endures as a singular locus of thermal culture and rural industry, where the continuum of history is measured not only in the stones of its fortress and church, but in the flow of waters that have borne humanity’s migrations, conflicts and aspirations. From the poet’s first invocation of Congedus’ warm springs to the artisans shaping clay and metal mills humming in modern factories, the town’s identity coalesces around the elemental encounter of earth, fire and water. Here, in the heart of Aragón, one finds a settlement whose significance is neither hyperbole nor affectation, but rather the steadfast testament of a community sustained by the springs that enter its very name.