1.
Coat of arms of Aragon
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The Coat of arms of the Spanish Autonomous Community of Aragon was first chronicled in 1499 by Pablo Hurus. The first quarter represents the legendary Kingdom of Sobrarbe and the establishment of Aragonese liberty, the second, the Cross of Íñigo Arista, represents the Pyrenees and the monarchy. The fourth quarter has the pallets, representing the union of Aragon to the Counties of Catalonia to create the Crown of Aragon, the third quarter inspired the coat of arms and flag of Sardinia. Aragon ruled Sardinia from in the 14th and 15th centuries
2.
Jaca
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Jaca is a city of northeastern Spain in the province of Huesca, located near the Pyrenees and the border with France. Jaca is an ancient fort on the Aragón River, situated at the crossing of two early medieval routes, one from Pau to Zaragoza. Jaca was the city out of which the County and Kingdom of Aragon developed It was the capital of Aragon until 1097, besides Jaca town, there are a number of outlying villages in Jacas municipality, including the ski resort of Astún. The origins of the city are obscure, but its name is apparently of Lacetani origin, Strabo adds that their territory lay on the site of the wars in the 1st century BC between Sertorius and Pompey. The coins show a bearded head to the right with an inscription to the left. The reverse side depicts a horseman carrying a spear to the right and it is unknown when the town was reconquered. Ramiro I of Aragon granted it the title of City, in 1063 it was the site of the Synod of Jaca. On December 12–131930 a mutiny, demanding the abolition of the monarchy, was suppressed with some difficulty and it was an early event that preceded the Spanish Civil War. Jaca boasts several medieval walls and towers surrounding the 11th-century Romanesque Jaca Cathedral, the Jaca citadel, a fortification dating to the late 16th century, is home to a colony of rock sparrows. The Diocesan Museum of Jaca protects Romanesque and Gothic frescoes, some of which were found in the most remote locations in the Jaca district, Jaca is a tourist destination in the region for summer holidays and winter sports. Jaca was the host city of the 1981 and 1995 Winter Universiades, the city also hosted the 2007 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival. Its popularity for winter sports has been a factor in the citys failed bids for the 1998 Winter Olympics,2002 Winter Olympics and 2010 Winter Olympics. It was again the applicant city of Spain for the 2014 Winter Olympics, diocese of Jaca Official website Diocesan Museum of Jaca Jaca, Useful information about tourism and lodgings
3.
Huesca
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Huesca is a city in north-eastern Spain, within the autonomous community of Aragon. It is also the capital of the Spanish province of the same name, in 2009 it had a population of 52,059, almost a quarter of the total population of the province. The city is one of the smallest provincial capitals in Spain, Huesca celebrates its main festival Fiestas de San Lorenzo from 9 to 15 August. Huesca dates from pre-Roman times, and was known as Bolskan in the ancient Iberian language. It was once the capital of the Vescetani, in the north of Hispania Tarraconensis, on the road from Tarraco, during Roman times, the city was known as Osca, and was a Roman colony under the rule of Quintus Sertorius, who made Osca his base. The city minted its own coinage and was the site of a school founded by Sertorius to educate young Iberians in Latin. After Sertorius, it is thought that it was renamed Ileoscan by Strabo and it appears to have been situated on silver mines. The Romanised city was made a municipium by decree of Augustus in 30 BC, the Arabs conquered the city in the late 8th century, and the city came to be called Washqah, falling within the Upper March of the Emirate of Córdoba. In 1094 Sancho Ramirez built the nearby Castle of Montearagón with the intention of laying siege to Wasqah but was killed by an arrow as he reached the citys walls. It was conquered in 1096 by Peter I of Aragon, in 1354, King Peter IV of Aragon founded the University of Huesca, which initially had a faculty of theology. The school expanded, but by the end of the 16th century was eclipsed by the University of Zaragoza, the university was abolished in 1845. During the Spanish Civil War the Huesca Front was the scene of some of the worst fighting between the Republicans and Francos army, the city was besieged by the Republicans, George Orwell among them, but didnt fall. Huesca celebrates its most important annual festival in August, the festival of San Lorenzo, the anniversary of his martyrdom falls on August 10. The fiesta starts on 9 August and finishes on the 15, many of the inhabitants dress in green and white for the duration. San Lorenzo, born in Huesca, was a deacon in Rome, the grille is the symbol of San Lorenzo and can be seen in a number of decorative works in the city. Huesca is also the birthplace of film director Carlos Saura and his brother Antonio Saura, there is an international film festival held annually. The writer Oscar Sipan, winner of several prizes, was born in Huesca in 1974. The celebrated illustrator Isidro Ferrer, though born in Madrid, lives in the city, Huesca lies on a plateau in the northern region of Aragón, at an altitude of 488 m above sea level
4.
Zaragoza
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Zaragoza, also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributaries, the Huerva, on 1 September 2010 the population of the city of Zaragoza was 701,090, within its administrative limits on a land area of 1,062.64 square kilometres, ranking fifth in Spain. It is the 32nd most populous municipality in the European Union, the population of the metropolitan area was estimated in 2006 at 783,763 inhabitants. The municipality is home to more than 50 percent of the Aragonese population, the city lies at an elevation of 199 metres above sea level. Zaragoza hosted Expo 2008 in the summer of 2008, a fair on water. It was also a candidate for the European Capital of Culture in 2012, the city is famous for its folklore, local gastronomy, and landmarks such as the Basílica del Pilar, La Seo Cathedral and the Aljafería Palace. Together with La Seo and the Aljafería, several other buildings part of the Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Fiestas del Pilar are among the most celebrated festivals in Spain, the city was called by the ancient Romans Caesaraugusta, from which the present name derives. The Iberian town that predated the Roman city was called Salduie, see also, Caesar Augusta The Sedetani, a tribe of ancient Iberians, populated a village called Salduie. Later on, Augustus founded a city called Caesaraugusta at the location to settle army veterans from the Cantabrian wars. The foundation date of Caesaraugusta has not been set with exact precision, the city did not suffer any decline during the last centuries of the Roman empire and was captured peacefully by the Goths in the fifth century AD. From 1018 to 1118, Zaragoza was one of the taifa kingdoms, during the first three decades of this period, 1018–1038, the city was ruled by the Banu Tujibi. After the death of El Cid his kingdom was overrun by the Almoravids, who, by 1100, had managed to cross the Ebro into Barbastro, the Banu Hud stubbornly resisted the Almoravids and ruled until they were eventually defeated by them in May 1110. On 18 December 1118, the Aragonese led by Alfonso I conquered the city from the Almoravids, after Alfonsos death without heirs in 1134, Zaragoza was swiftly occupied by Alfonso VII of León and Castile. The wedding never happened, as Petronila ended up marrying Ramon Berenguer IV, the marriage union was the origin of the Crown of Aragón. While the reality of the existence of Saint Dominguito del Val is questioned, despite a decline in the outlying rural economy, Zaragoza has continued to grow. The General Military Academy, a training center of the Spanish Army, was re-established on September 27,1940 by Minister of the Army José Enrique Varela Iglesias. During the second half of the 20th century, Zaragozas population boomed as a number of factories opened in the region, in 1979, the Hotel Corona de Aragón fire killed at least 80
5.
Aragonese language
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It is the only modern language which survived from medieval Navarro-Aragonese in a form distinctly different from Spanish. Informally known as fabla, Aragonese is also referred to by the names of its local dialects such as cheso or patués. Aragonese, which developed in portions of the Ebro basin, can be traced back to the High Middle Ages and it spread throughout the Pyrenees to areas where languages similar to Basque were previously spoken. The Kingdom of Aragon expanded southward from the mountains, pushing the Moors farther south in the Reconquista, the Aragonese Reconquista in the south ended with the cession of Murcia by James I of Aragon to the Kingdom of Castile as dowry for an Aragonese princess. The best-known proponent of the Aragonese language was Johan Ferrandez dHeredia and he wrote an extensive catalog of works in Aragonese and translated several works from Greek into Aragonese. The spread of Castilian, the Castilian origin of the Trastámara dynasty, a turning point was the 15th-century coronation of the Castilian Ferdinand I of Aragon, also known as Ferdinand of Antequeraa. In recent times, Aragonese was mostly regarded as a group of dialects of Spanish. Compulsory education undermined its already weak position, for example, pupils were punished for using it, however, the 1978 Spanish transition to democracy heralded literary works and studies of the language. Aragonese is the language of the Aragonese mountain ranges of the Pyrenees, in the comarcas of Somontano, Jacetania, Sobrarbe. Cities and towns in which Aragonese is spoken are Huesca, Graus, Monzón, Barbastro, Bielsa, Chistén, Fonz, Echo, Estadilla, Benasque, Campo, Sabiñánigo, Jaca, Plan, Ansó, Ayerbe, Broto, and El Grado. It is spoken as a language by inhabitants of Huesca, Zaragoza, Ejea de los Caballeros. According to recent polls, there are about 10,000 active speakers and 30,000 passive speakers, in 2009, the Languages Act of Aragon recognized the native language, original and historic of Aragon. The language received several linguistic rights, including its use in public administration, some are conservative features that are also shared with the Astur-Leonese languages and Galician-Portuguese, where Spanish innovated in ways that did not spread to nearby languages. Romance initial F- is preserved, e. g. FILIUM > fillo, Romance palatal approximant consistently became medieval, as in medieval Catalan and Portuguese. This becomes modern ch, as a result of the devoicing of sibilants, in Spanish, the medieval result was either, or nothing, depending on the context. IUVENEM > choven, GELARE > chelar, Romance groups -LT-, -CT- result in, e. g. FACTUM > feito, MULTUM > muito. Romance groups -X-, -PS-, SCj- result in voiceless palatal fricative ix, Romance groups -Lj-, -CL-, -TL- result in palatal lateral ll, e. g. MULIERE > muller, ACUTLA > agulla. Open O, E from Romance result systematically in diphthongs, e. g. VETLA > viella and this includes before a palatal approximant, e. g. octō > ueito
6.
Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
7.
Catalan language
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Catalan is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain and adjoining parts of France. It is the national and only language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands. It also has status in the commune of Alghero, situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Sardinia. All these territories are often called Catalan Countries. 4% with Catalan and 47. 5% only Spanish, in order to integrate newcomers, the Generalitat de Catalunya spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees, during the Low Middle Ages it saw a golden age as the literary and dominant language of the Crown of Aragon, and was widely used all over the Mediterranean. The union of Aragon with the territories of Spain in 1479 marked the start of the decline of the language. In 1659 Spain ceded Northern Catalonia to France, and Catalan was banned in both states in the early 18th century, 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, which culminated in the 1913 orthographic standardization, and the official status of the language during the Second Spanish Republic. However, the Francoist dictatorship banned the use of Catalan in schools and in the public administration, there is no parallel in Europe for such a large, bilingual, non-state speech community. Catalan dialects are relatively uniform, and are mutually intelligible and they are divided into two blocks, Eastern and Western, differing mostly in pronunciation. The terms Catalan and Valencian are two varieties of the same language, there are two institutions regulating the two standard varieties, the Institute of Catalan Studies in Catalonia and the Valencian Academy of the Language in the Valencian Community. Catalan shares many traits with its neighboring Romance languages, thus, the similarities are naturally most notable with eastern Occitan. Nouns have two genders, and two numbers, pronouns additionally can have a neuter gender, and some are also inflected for case and politeness, and can be combined in very complex ways. Verbs are split in several paradigms and are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, in terms of pronunciation, Catalan has many words ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters, in contrast with many other Romance languages. The word Catalan derives from the territory of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology, in English, the term referring to a person first appears in the mid 14th century as Catelaner, followed in the 15th century as Catellain. It is attested a language name since at least 1652, Catalan can be pronounced as /ˈkætəlæn/, /kætəˈlæn/ or /ˈkætələn/. The endonym is pronounced /kə. təˈɫa/ in the Eastern Catalan dialects, in the Valencian Community, the term valencià is frequently used instead. The names Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, see also status of Valencian below. By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south
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