San Esteban de Gormaz
Encyclopedia
San Esteban de Gormaz is a municipality
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 in the province
Provinces of Spain
Spain and its autonomous communities are divided into fifty provinces .In other languages of Spain:*Catalan/Valencian , sing. província.*Galician , sing. provincia.*Basque |Galicia]] — are not also the capitals of provinces...

 of Soria
Soria (province)
Soria is a province of central Spain, in the eastern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. Most of the province is in the mountainous Sistema Ibérico areaIt is bordered by the provinces of La Rioja, Zaragoza, Guadalajara, Segovia, and Burgos....

 in the autonomous community of Castile-Leon, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. Its population is approximately 3,500. The town is located in the Wool Route and the Way of the Cid, the route of the exile of the Cid.

The village lies between the bank of River Duero and a small hill, 70 km east of the capital of the province (Soria
Soria
Soria is a city in north-central Spain, the capital of the province of Soria in the autonomous community of Castile and León. , the municipality has a population of c. 39,500 inhabitants, nearly 40% of the population of the province...

), 28 km from Tiermes
Tiermes
Tiermes is a Sami god of thunder and rain, also called Aijeke or Ajeke and often identified with Horagalles.Tiermes is god of the sky and thunder and lightning, the rainbow, weather, oceans, and lakes and rules over human life, health, and well-being. He protects people and their animals from...

 and 45 km from Aranda de Duero
Aranda de Duero
Aranda de Duero is a Spanish town and municipality in the south of the province of Burgos, autonomous community of Castile and León. It has a population of roughly 33,000 people. The post code for the town is 09400. The closest airport is in Valladolid....

.

The Arab Gormaz Castle
Arab Gormaz Castle
The castle of Gormaz is a large citadel located in Castile and León, Spain.-Location:...

 is located nearby.

The zone where it is located has known settlements from prehistory.

Historically, both Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 and Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

 establishments of which some heritage is conserved.

The Arabs considered it a very important Christian center. This caused it to become a military objective for 200 years, from the beginning of the construction of its castle by the Arabs in the ninth century (at which time the population was called Castromoro) until it fell finally into the hands of the kingdom of Castile. The innumerable fights that took place this time throughout were the reason so that this place located in the border of Castile consolidated as an urban nucleus.

In 1187 the first Cortes of Castile were celebrated in the town and its importance continued growing until the end of the thirteenth century, when it reached its maximum splendor. By this date it had 3000 inhabitants (120 knights), four parishes and two monasteries located outside the limits of the village.

After the thirteenth century, the town decayed slowly. It experienced periods of great poverty and loss of population until the twentieth century. However, recently it has carried out an industrialization project that helped elevate the population to the levels that it had known in better times.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK