The history
The Priorat is a Catalan region located in the province of Tarragona. Its name comes from the old monastery of Santa Maria de Scala Dei, founded in the 12th century by Carthusian monks and which exerted a great influence on the area. The Priorat is characterized by its mountainous landscape, its vineyards and its historical and cultural heritage. Among its main attractions are the Serra del Montsant Natural Park, the monastery of Santa Maria de Scala Dei and the wine route, which allows you to get to know the wineries and wines with the Priorat designation of origin.
THE PRIORAT
The Priorat, located in the south of the Principality, is part of the counties of Catalunya Nova, the territory occupied by the Saracens until the 12th century. It preserves vestiges of past eras that make us travel back in time, among the most distant being the Saracen fortress of Siurana, capital of the extensive valiat of the same name, inside which the remains of one of the oldest mosques in Catalonia. The Christian reconquest, initiated by King Ramon Berenguer IV, led to the building of churches and monasteries in order to spread the new faith.
The Siurana church is a good example, built in the 12th century, it is one of the few Romanesque style churches that have been preserved in the south of Catalonia. Christianization bequeathed us the most prominent monument of the region: the Carthusian Church of Santa Maria d’Escaladei. Founded at the end of the 12th century, initially small in size, it was expanded and reformed over the centuries until it got the neoclassical look we can see today.
The Priory of Escaladei was for centuries a powerful administration that often came into conflict with the house of Prades, lords of much of the rest of the Priorat’s territory. The Counts of Prades built the castle that dominates the town of Falset in the 12th century, which passed from family to family until it came into the hands of the last lords of the town, the Medinaceli. These had their palace erected in the 17th century in Plaça de la Quartera (current City Hall), one of the most beautiful squares in the Priorat, very close to which another noble family, the Azaras, built their residence ( current headquarters of the County Council of the Priorat). The beautiful facades of both buildings are testament to this splendor.
The industrialization of Catalonia in the 19th century also reached the Priorat, albeit modestly. The mining operation of the Siurana basin has bequeathed us a mining-metallurgical complex, one of the most important in the country, in the village of Bellmunt.
The airs of modernity and the new avant-garde trends of the early 20th century, along with the cooperative movement, left the mark of relevant architects such as Cèsar Martinell, Gaudí’s disciple. Father of rural modernism, he designed the so-called cathedrals of wine, specifically in the Priorat, the cooperative wineries of Falset and Cornudella de Montsant.