1.
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
2.
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
3.
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
4.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
5.
Early modern period
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The early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages of the post-classical era. Historians in recent decades have argued that from a worldwide standpoint, the period witnessed the exploration and colonization of the Americas and the rise of sustained contacts between previously isolated parts of the globe. The historical powers became involved in trade, as the exchange of goods, plants, animals, and food crops extended to the Old World. The Columbian Exchange greatly affected the human environment, New economies and institutions emerged, becoming more sophisticated and globally articulated over the course of the early modern period. This process began in the medieval North Italian city-states, particularly Genoa, Venice, the early modern period also included the rise of the dominance of the economic theory of mercantilism. The European colonization of the Americas, Asia, and Africa occurred during the 15th to 19th centuries, the early modern trends in various regions of the world represented a shift away from medieval modes of organization, politically and economically. Historians typically date the end of the modern period when the French Revolution of the 1790s began the modern period. Early modern themes Other In 16th century China, the Ming Dynastys economy was stimulated by trade with the Portuguese, Spanish. China became involved in a new trade of goods, plants, animals. Trade with Early Modern Europe and Japan brought in massive amounts of silver, during the last decades of the Ming the flow of silver into China was greatly diminished, thereby undermining state revenues and the entire Chinese economy. This damage to the economy was compounded by the effects on agriculture of the incipient Little Ice Age, natural calamities, crop failure, the ensuing breakdown of authority and peoples livelihoods allowed rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng to challenge Ming authority. The Ming Dynasty fell around 1644 to the Qing Dynasty, which was the last ruling dynasty of China, during its reign, the Qing Dynasty became highly integrated with Chinese culture. The Azuchi-Momoyama period saw the unification that preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Edo period from 1600 to 1868 characterized early modern Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period gets its name from the city, Edo. The Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo Castle from 1603 until 1868, in 1392, General Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon Dynasty with a largely bloodless coup. Joseon experienced advances in science and culture, King Sejong the Great promulgated hangul, the Korean alphabet. The period saw various other cultural and technological advances as well as the dominance of neo-Confucianism over the entirety of Korea, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, invasions by the neighboring Japanese and Qing Chinese nearly overran the Korean peninsula
6.
Enlightenment in Spain
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The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment came to Spain in the eighteenth century with the new Bourbon dynasty, following the death of the last Habsburg monarch, Charles II, in 1700. Like the Spanish Enlightenment, the Spanish Bourbon monarchs were imbued with Spains Catholic identity, the Bourbon monarchs sought the expansion of scientific knowledge, which had been urged by Benedictine friar Benito Feijóo. From 1777 to 1816, the Spanish crown funded scientific expeditions to gather information about the potential wealth of the empire. Spanish scholars sought to understand the decline of the Spanish empire from its glory days. In Spanish America, the Enlightenment also had an impact in the intellectual and scientific sphere, the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula was enormously destabilizing for Spain and the Spanish overseas empire. The ideas of the Hispanic Enlightenment have been seen as a contributor to the Spanish American wars of independence. The French Bourbons had a claim on the Spanish throne following the 1700 death of the last Hapsburg monarch, Charles II. France won War of the Spanish Succession and the Bourbon monarchy was established in Spain, once it consolidated rule in Spain, the Bourbon monarchs embarked upon a series of reforms to revitalize the Spanish empire, which had significantly declined in power in the late Hapsburg era. The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment had an impact in Spain. A cortes was convened in Cádiz, which ratified a constitution in 1812. Ferdinand VII claimed he supported the liberal constitutions, but once restored to power in 1814, he renounced it, New Spain and Peru were the exceptions, becoming independent in 1821 and 1824. Mexico briefly had a monarchy under royalist military officer turned insurgent Agustín de Iturbide, Spain was at the center of this political crisis, but it was the object not the arbiter. The vastness of the Spanish Empire in the New World, along with her naval resources, had made Spain a vital part of European power politics. If the throne of Spain was to go to a relative of the king of France, if it remained in the hands of another member of the anti-French, Austrian Habsburg dynasty, the status quo would remain. European politics during the century became dominated by establishing an orderly succession in Spain that would not alter the balance between Europes great powers. Castilian legitimists, who valued the succession of the closest heir of the king over the continuation of Habsburg rule, Spanish officials were also concerned with Spain remaining an independent country, rather than another part of the French or Austrian empires. Even so, on hearing the news that his grandson had become King of Spain, Louis XIV proclaimed, at age 17, Philip V arrived in Madrid in early 1701 without visible opposition. Philip confirmed the fueros of Catalunya and Aragon, and to all appearances the Bourbon succession was successful, the Austrian Hapsburg claimant to the Spanish throne, Archduke Charles of Austria, argued that he had been cheated out of the throne of Spain unfairly
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