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Medieval Balaguer
Balaguer owes its origin to the strategic situation of the place as a point of
control of the river Segre, the most important communication route between the plain
of Lleida and the Septimania. The installation of a military camp during the first
half of the 18th century on the Pla díAlmatà (the most important Islamic period
site in Catalonia) was the first step of the Islamic world in the city. This ancient
camp became a city (madîna) at the end of the 9th century, when the castle
that later on would be converted into the Sudda or governor's residence was also
built, and where Yusuf al-Muzaffares (1045-1082) built a palace decorated with painted
plasterwork comparable to what exists in the Aljaferia of Zaragoza and which represents
the maximum exponent of 11th century Islamic architecture in the Iberian peninsula.
Madîna Balagî reached its maximum extension during the 10th and 11th
centuries, a period in which two new quarters were born to the south and east of
the fortress: the neighbourhood of El Torrent at the foot of the Sudda and beside
the river Segre, and the neighbourhood of El Pla, on the first terrace of the river.
With the conquest of the city by the Count of Urgell in 1105, Balaguer saw the arrival
of the new inhabitants who were accompanied by great changes, both political and
social, economic and cultural. A new system of government and the organisation of
property was set up, feudalism.
The conquest lead to depopulation and ruin, and a drastic reduction of the urban
area with the abandonment of the whole urban nucleus of the Pla d'Almatà:
it went from an area of 33 hectares to 6.
The fact of becoming the capital of the County of Urgell was decisive for Balaguer
as it gradually took on considerable political importance which reached its height
in the 14th century. With the entry of the House of Barcelona at the head of the
county (1314) the city received an important stimulus with the construction of great
public works (Sant Miquel bridge, Santa Maria, Sant Domènec...) which would
give it the form that has come down to our times. The sentence of Alfons el Benigne
(1333) according to which the Jews were expelled from the walled enclosure of the
city involved the creation of the Jewish quarter formed by the present day streets
of Carrer Barri Nou, Teixidors, Miracle and Sant Josep, and the formation of the
Plaça del Mercadal. The final effect of the sentence was the necessity to
expand the walls of the city to protect the new quarter, construction that was finished
during the siege that the city suffered as a result of the confrontation between
Jaume II el Dissortat ("The Unlucky") and king Ferran d'Antequera in 1413,
an event which marked the beginning of the process of extinction of the county of
Urgell and the loss of category of the city within the Crown of Aragon. |
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