Jumilla () is a town and a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

in southeastern

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. It is located in the north east of the Region of Murcia, close to the towns of Cieza and Yecla. According to the 2018 census, the town population was 25,547.

Geography

The municipality, located in the north of the Region of Murcia, covers . It shares borders with the municipality of Yecla at its northeast and its east; with Abarán, Fortuna and Cieza at its south and with Abanilla at its east. It also adjoins the province of Albacete in the

autonomous community The autonomous communities () are the first-level administrative divisions of Spain, created in accordance with the Spanish Constitution of 1978, with the aim of guaranteeing limited autonomy to the nationalities and regions that make up Sp ...

Castilla–La Mancha Castilla–La Mancha (, ; ) is an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Spain. Comprising the provinces of Province of Albacete, Albacete, Province of Ciudad Real, Ciudad Real, Province of Cuenca, Cuenca, Province of Guadalajar ...

at its west and the province of

Alicante Alicante (, , ; ; ; officially: ''/'' ) is a city and municipalities of Spain, municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean port. The population ...

in the autonomous community

Valencian Community The Valencian Community is an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Spain. It is the fourth most populous Spanish Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community after Andalusia, Catalonia and the Community of Madrid wit ...

. In this municipality there are several mountain landforms. There are three which are specially noteworthy in the territory and these are Sierra del Carche, Sierra del Buey and Sierra de la Pila. Other geographical elements that occupy the territory are three salt evaporation ponds. Regarding water landforms, there are not any basin with permanent water flow, but there are three ''ramblas'' or ''arroyos'' (creeks).

Human geography

The inhabitants of the municipality are distributed in the following localities: Jumilla, where 24,416 people live; La Estacada, where there are 284 residents; Fuente del Pino, which is located in the northern half and is home to 125 people; Cañada del Trigo, which is located in the southeast of Jumilla and has a population of 121; Torre del Rico, which is placed in the southeast of the municipality and is occupied by 106 residents; El Carche, which is placed in the east of the territory and occupied by 8 residents; La Alquería, with a population of 155 and Las Encebras, which is located in the southern half and is home to 45 people.

History

This current municipality was populated in the Lower Paleolithic, 450,000 years ago. Remains of human presence in the Upper and Middle Paleolithic were discovered in the same spot as the Lower Paleolithic ones. These have a date of the 80,000 BC. There is also evidence of human presence in the Epipalaeolithic in this territory, and it consists in the archaeological sites. Regarding the

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

in this current municipality, ruins of an ancient

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

are the trace of the people living in that era. The archaeological site is named El Prado, and it has a distance of from the town Jumilla. This hamlet was inhabited by 300 people, and its dwellings consisted of huts formed with reed and mud adobe. There is a cave in this current municipality which had a sacred purpose for these people 5,000 years ago. In that spot, burial sites had been discovered. The

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

(1900 BC - 900 BC in Region of Murcia) was an important period for Jumilla and this statement is based in the fact that a relevant quantity of hamlets of this era were found with some archaeological operations. In the 3rd century BC, the

Carthaginians The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people, Semitic people who Phoenician settlement of North Africa, migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Iron ...

colonised a large part of the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( ), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprisin ...

: from the current city of Cádiz, to the Ebro River. The

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...

waged war on

Carthage Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classic ...

in the Second Punic War, and won. As a result of these facts, Jumilla became Roman territory, and its farming lands were divided up among legionnaires. Remains of

Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

in Jumilla are the Roman villa's ruins, which are part of the landscape of the municipality. Some remarkable remains are a bronze statuette of the god Hypos and mosaics. There is a trace element from the 5th century AD (

Late antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

) and it consists in a funerary structure. In the year 711 AD,

Berbers Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also known as Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arab migrations to the Maghreb, Arabs in the Maghreb. Their main connec ...

and

Arabs Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of yea ...

entered the Iberian Peninsula and conquered a large portion of it. Approximately the area of the current Region of Murcia came to be under Adb's Al-Aziz power. The Abd's Al-Aziz troops circulated through Jumilla territory. The

Muslims Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

used previous built fortifications for erecting their fortress. In the mid-13th century, the king of the Taifa of Murcia Aben Hud was menaced by the Castillian troops and by the monarch of the

Emirate of Granada The Emirate of Granada, also known as the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, was an Emirate, Islamic polity in the southern Iberian Peninsula during the Late Middle Ages, ruled by the Nasrid dynasty. It was the last independent Muslim state in Western ...

, Aben Almahar. The king of the Taifa of Murcia reached an agreement with the prince

Alfonso X of Castile Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, ; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, Kingdom of León, León and Kingdom of Galicia, Galicia from 1 June 1252 until his death in 1284. During the April 1257 Imperial election, election of 1 ...

, who would be king. In this deal, issues such as respecting the inhabitants lives and possessions were agreed. Alfonso X of Castile visited Jumilla when he was king. He decided to get the Church of Santa María de Gracia built, and nowadays, a part of the church is still preserved. After the death of Alfonso X, there were disputes for reigning. The

Crown of Aragon The Crown of Aragon (, ) ;, ; ; . was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona (later Principality of Catalonia) and ended as a consequence of the War of the Sp ...

took advantage of that situation - It broke out a war against the Crown of Castile and invaded the Kingdom of Murcia. Jumilla was conquered in the late 13th century or in the early 14th century. It was during under the Crown of Aragon Control era when the first historic document which address solely Jumilla was written. The document was about demarcating lands and municipality with boundary markers. In the mid-14th century, when Jumilla was under the

power, this town became a border locality. As a consequence, Jumilla must have been ruled with a man having an iron fist. Consequently, the inhabitants asked the king Peter of Castile for help in order to live in territory which belonged again to the Crown of Castile. Frederik of Castile, who was son of the king Ferdinand III of Castile, caused Jumilla to belong to the Crown of Castile again in the year 1357. Two of the first important facts in Jumilla were the French invasion and the resulting

Peninsular War The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Kingdom of Portugal, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French ...

. Jumilla plunged into the war and its inhabitants established the military defence junta.

Economy

Jumilla's economy is based on agriculture with main cultivation being vineyards, olive trees and fruit trees. Jumilla is home to a large photovoltaic solar power farm, with an installed peak power capacity of 20 megawatts. The solar farm consists of 120,000 solar panels and covers . The farm's total annual production will be the equivalent of the energy used by 20,000 homes. The solar panels are owned by groups of investors. It is expected to generate an estimated annual income of $28 million (€19 million) and a reduction in CO2 emissions of 42,000 tons a year. Powerlight provided single-axis solar trackers to improve the system's performance. Jumilla, together with neighboring Yecla, is one of the primary regions for development of the Murciana and Granadina breeds of dairy goats. Jumilla is also a

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

-producing region famous for its Carta Roja wines. Jumilla's wine production and culture are particularly notable for its use of the Monastrell grape as a varietal.

Main sights

Some buildings that have special culture values such as historic or artistic are shown below: *El Casón: This is a funerary vault which estimated date of its building is the 5th century AD. *Jumilla's castle: The hill where the castle is built was inhabited by people from the Bronze Age. In a later era, this was occupied by people when Iberian civilizations were present in large part of Iberian Peninsula, and specifically in the current municipality. In Roman Iberian Peninsula period, people also leveraged this hill. The last era in regards to this hill before the construction of the current castle is the one when large part of Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim peoples rule. They built a fortress in the 8th century, but they used unstable materials. The current castle was built in the year 1461 and its architectural style is gothic. *Cuco de la Alberquilla/ Cuco de Zacarías *Santa María del Rosario Church: It was built on a Muslim cemetery in the first half of the 15th century, and it is placed in the town end. *Palacio del Antiguo Concejo *San Agustín Church: It is placed in the town end, and locals conceive it as a border demarcator in regards to the town and the countryside. It was erected in the year 1570 and restored in the late-18th century. It has a rectangular plan, one

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

, some side chapels, and a small crossing. Two domes are present in the building – one roofs the crossing and the other roofs the

altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religion, religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, Church (building), churches, and other places of worship. They are use ...

. *Santa Ana del Monte Convent: This was built in the year 1573. *San Roque Arch *San José Church: This was built in the late 17th century. Its architectural style is

baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

with local features of Region of Murcia. *San Antón Church: This was formed in 1611 and is placed in the town end. It has a Greek cross plan. The building was restored in 2002. Currently, it serves as a museum for

Holy Week Holy Week () commemorates the seven days leading up to Easter. It begins with the commemoration of Triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, marks the betrayal of Jesus on Spy Wednesday (Holy Wednes ...

issues. *Vico Theatre: This building was constructed in the late 19th century and its architectural style is eclectic. *Modernist building: It was built in the year 1911.

Festivities

The festivities held in the municipality are shown below: *

*Wine grapes harvesting festivity: this event takes place in August, and it coincides with the patron saint festivity. *Patron saint festivity: It is held in August. It usually starts on the second week and lasts 10 or 11 days. * Moros y cristianos: it also occurs in August. * Jumilla Town National Festival of Folklore

References

{{authority control Municipalities in the Region of Murcia