One looking for a sampling of all that Spain has to offer in one locale could do worse than traveling to Aragon, an autonomous community located in northeastern Spain. From the peaks and forgotten valleys of the Aragonese Pyrenees to the high-desert plains of Aragon's south, from the imposing majesty of the castle at Loarre to the UNESCO World Heritage Site mudejar architecture in Zaragoza and Teruel, Aragon covers much of what makes Spain "Spain" in its relatively small territory. Aragon consists of three provinces: Zaragoza (which includes the capital city of the same name), Huesca to the north, and Teruel to the south. Aragon's 18,400 sq. miles (47,700 sq. km) are home to a population of 1.3 million, with over half of those residing in the city of Zaragoza. Historically, Aragon has long-served as a bridge between the Spanish heartland of Castile and surrounding languages, cultures, and peoples--the well-traveled, independent-minded "Meditteraneans" of Catalunya to the east; the insular, even-more-independent-minded Basques of Navarra to the northwest; and the French to the north. Once a great kingdom in its own right, Aragon lost prominence as national power consolidated in Castile and its capital, Madrid, especially after the 1479 marriage of King Ferdinand to Castilian Queen Isabella, who together would go on to complete the reconquista ("reconquest", the centuries-long process by which Christians of northern Spain and Portugal retook territories held by Muslim, Moorish states, based in Al-Andalus, modern-day Andalusia) and solidify a Spanish state. Aragonese sovereignty would receive a final blow under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who heavily discouraged regional identities apart from the Spanish national identity, and forbade the teaching of Spanish languages other than Castellano (Castilian Spanish). Aragonese as a language has almost disappeared, but is still spoken in the secluded valleys of the Aragonese Pyrenees. Linguistically, it is not a dialect of Castilian Spanish, but a separate Romance language, with many similarities to classical Latin and to Catalunyan and the langues d'Oc of Southern France. The cuisine of Aragon is typically rustic fare, best exemplified perhaps by migas ("crumbs"), a simple dish made of yesterday's bread fried up with olive oil, sausage, egg, grapes, or whatever else might be lying around. Lamb is also common. As is true of everywhere in Spain, ham is abundant, and the local wines are respectable counterparts to the more famous varieties of neighboring La Rioja. |
