Valencia
Valencia, officially València, is the capital of the province and autonomous community of the same name in Spain. It is located on the banks of the Turia, on the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula on the Mediterranean Sea. With a population of 824,340, it is the third-largest city in Spain. The urban area of Valencia has 1.6 million people while the metropolitan region has 2.5 million.
Valencia was founded as a Roman colony in 138 BC as . As an autonomous city in late antiquity, its militarization followed the onset of the threat posed by the Byzantine presence to the South, together with effective integration to the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo in the late 6th century. Islamic rule and acculturation ensued in the 8th century, together with the introduction of new irrigation systems and crops. With the Aragonese Christian conquest in 1238, the city became the capital of the Kingdom of Valencia.
Due to trade with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, Italian ports, and other Mediterranean locations, the city thrived in the 15th century and Valencia had become one of the largest European cities by the end of the century. The emergence of the Atlantic World affected Mediterranean trade in the global trade networks and, along with insecurity created by Barbary piracy throughout the 16th century. Although the 16th century had been notable for the large number of religious foundations which, according to one estimate, suggested that one third of its area had been occupied by religious buildings. The city's economic activity suffered a crisis following the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609.
The city became a major silk manufacturing centre in the 18th century. During the Spanish Civil War, the city served as the provisional seat of the Spanish Government from 1936 to 1937.
The Port of Valencia is one of the busiest container ports in Europe and the Mediterranean. The city is ranked as a Gamma-level global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Valencia has numerous celebrations and traditions, such as the Falles, which were declared a Fiesta of National Tourist Interest of Spain in 1965 and an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in November 2016. The city was selected as the 2011, the World Design Capital 2022 and the European Green Capital 2024.
Name
The Latin name of the city was Valēntia, meaning "strength" or "valour", due to the Roman practice of recognising the valour of former Roman soldiers after a war. The Roman historian Livy explains that the founding of Valentia in the 2nd century BC was due to the settling of the Roman soldiers who fought against a Lusitanian rebel, Viriatus, during the Third Raid of the Lusitanian War.During the period of Islamic rule, the city was called Medina at-Tarab according to one transliteration, or Medina at-Turab according to another, since it was located on the banks of the River Turia. It is not clear if an Arabised variant of the Latin name referred to the greater Taifa of Valencia, or just the city itself.
Via gradual phonetic changes, Valentia became Valencia in Spanish and València in Valencian. In Valencian, an e with a grave accent indicates in contrast to, but the word València is an exception to this rule, since è is pronounced. The spelling "València" was approved by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua based on tradition after a debate on the matter. The name "València" has been the only official name of the city since 2017. In 2023, the Commission of Culture of the municipal corporation agreed in principle on a dual official denomination Valencia/Valéncia, with the far right managing to impose a non-standard acute accent in the e of the Valencian-language name.
History
Roman colony
Valencia is one of the oldest cities in Spain, founded in the Roman period as Valentia Edetanorum. A few centuries later, with the power vacuum left by the demise of the Roman imperial administration, the Catholic Church assumed power in the city, coinciding with the first waves of the invading Germanic peoples.Middle Ages
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Valencia became part of the Visigothic Kingdom from 546 to 711 AD. The city surrendered to the invading Moors about 714 AD. Abd al-Rahman I laid waste to old Valencia by 788–789. From then on, the name of Valencia appears more related to the wider area than to the city, which is primarily cited as Madînat al-Turâb and presumably had diminished importance throughout the period. During the emiral period, the surrounding territory, under the ascendancy of Berber chieftains, was prone to unruliness. In the wake of the start of the fitna of al-Andalus, Valencia became the head of an independent emirate, the Taifa of Valencia. It was initially controlled by eunuchs, and then, after 1021, by Abd al-Azîz. Valencia experienced notable urban development in this period. Many Jews lived in Valencia, including the accomplished Jewish poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol, who spent his last years in the city. After a damaging offensive by Castilian–Leonese forces towards 1065, the territory became a satellite of the Taifa of Toledo, and following the fall of the latter in 1085, a protectorate of "El Cid". A revolt erupted in 1092, handing the city to the Almoravids and forcing El Cid to take the city by force in 1094, henceforth establishing his own principality.Following the evacuation of the city in 1102, the Almoravids took control. As the Almoravid empire crumbled in the mid 12th-century, ibn Mardanīsh took control of eastern al-Andalus, creating a Murcia-centred independent emirate to which Valencia belonged, resisting the Almohads until 1172. During the Almohad rule, the city perhaps had a population of about 20,000. When the city fell to James I of Aragon, the Jewish population constituted about 7 per cent of the total population.
In 1238, King James I of Aragon, with an army composed of Aragonese, Catalans, Navarrese, and crusaders from the Order of Calatrava, laid siege to Valencia and on 28 September obtained a surrender. Fifty thousand Moors were forced to leave. The Jews of Valencia were afforded a quarter for residence in 1239, which was surrounded by a high wall in 1390. The quarter had three gates, all of which were closed at night; the Jewish cemetery was permitted just beyond 'the Jew's Gate', the Portal dels Jueues.
Valencia endured serious troubles in the mid-14th century, including the decimation of the population by the Black Death of 1348 and subsequent years of epidemics—as well as the series of wars and riots that followed.
In 1391, a pogrom struck the Jewish quarter of Valencia, part of a wave of anti-Jewish attacks that began earlier that year in Seville and spread across Castile and into the Crown of Aragon. The assault in Valencia was sparked when a procession of youths marched on the Jewish quarter, shouting that "the Archdeacon of Castile is coming with his cross, and that all the Jews should be baptized or die." Despite efforts by royal guards to intervene, thousands of Jews were murdered, and the survivors were forced to convert. The Jewish quarter was destroyed.
By the late 14th century, Genoese traders promoted the expansion of the cultivation of white mulberry in the area and later introduced innovative silk manufacturing techniques. Valencia became a centre of mulberry production and was, for a time, a major silk-producing centre. The Genoese community in Valencia—merchants, artisans and workers—became, along with Seville's, one of the most important in the Iberian Peninsula.
In 1407, following the model of the Barcelona institution created some years before, a Taula de canvi was created in Valencia, although its first iteration yielded limited success.
The 15th century was a time of economic expansion, known as the Valencian Golden Age, during which culture and the arts flourished. Concurrent population growth made Valencia the most populous city in the Crown of Aragon. Some of the city's landmark buildings were built during the Late Middle Ages, including the Serranos Towers, the Silk Exchange, the Miguelete Tower, and the Chapel of the Kings of the Convent of Sant Domènec. In painting and sculpture, Flemish and Italian trends had an influence on Valencian artists.
Valencia became a major slave trade centre in the 15th century, second only to Lisbon in the West, prompting a Lisbon–Seville–Valencia axis by the second half of the century powered by the incipient Portuguese slave trade originating in West Africa. By the end of the 15th century Valencia was one of the largest European cities, being the most populated city in the Hispanic Monarchy and second to Lisbon in the Iberian Peninsula.
Valencia also became one of the major ports of embarkation for Jews who left after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Isaac ben Yehudah Abrabanel and his family among them, by special permission granted to him by King Ferdinand.
Modern history
Following the death of Ferdinand II in 1516, the nobiliary estate challenged the Crown amid the relative void of power. In 1519, the Taula de Canvis was recreated again, known as Nova Taula. The nobles earned the rejection from the people of Valencia, and the whole kingdom was plunged into the Revolt of the Brotherhoods and full-blown civil war between 1521 and 1522. Muslim vassals were forced to convert in 1526 at the behest of Charles V.Urban and rural delinquency—linked to phenomena such as vagrancy, gambling, larceny, pimping and false begging—as well as the nobiliary banditry consisting of the revenges and rivalries between the aristocratic families flourished in Valencia during the 16th century. Furthermore, North African piracy targeted the whole coastline of the kingdom of Valencia, forcing the fortification of sites. By the late 1520s, the intensification of Barbary corsair activity along with domestic conflicts and the emergence of the Atlantic Ocean in detriment of the Mediterranean in global trade networks put an end to the economic splendor of the city. This piracy also paved the way for the ensuing development of Christian piracy, that had Valencia as one of its main bases in the Iberian Mediterranean. The Berber threat—initially with Ottoman support—generated great insecurity on the coast, and it would not be substantially reduced until the 1580s.
The crisis deepened during the 17th century with the 1609 expulsion of the Moriscos, descendants of the Muslim population that had converted to Christianity. The Spanish government systematically forced Moriscos to leave the kingdom for Muslim North Africa. They were concentrated in the former Crown of Aragon, and in the Kingdom of Valencia specifically, and constituted roughly a third of the total population. The expulsion caused the financial ruin of some of the Valencian nobility and the bankruptcy of the Taula de canvi in 1613.
The decline of the city reached its nadir with the War of the Spanish Succession, marking the end of the political and legal independence of the Kingdom of Valencia. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Valencia sided with the Habsburg ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles of Austria. King Charles vowed to protect the laws of the Kingdom of Valencia, which gained him the sympathy of a wide sector of the Valencian population. On 24 January 1706, after having ridden south from Barcelona, Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough, led a handful of English cavalrymen into the city and captured the nearby fortress at Sagunt, bluffing the Spanish Bourbon army into withdrawal.
The English held the city for 16 months, defeating several attempts to expel them. After the victory of the Bourbons at the Battle of Almansa on 25 April 1707, the English army evacuated Valencia and Philip V ordered the repeal of the Furs of Valencia as punishment for the kingdom's support of Charles of Austria. By the Nueva Planta decrees, the ancient Charters of Valencia were abolished and the city was governed by the Castilian Charter, similarly to other places in the Crown of Aragon.
The Valencian economy recovered during the 18th century with the rising manufacture of woven silk and ceramic tiles. The silk industry boomed during this century, with Valencia replacing Toledo as the centre of silk-manufacturing in Spain. The Palau de Justícia is an example of the affluence manifested in the most prosperous times of Bourbon rule during the rule of Charles III. The 18th century was the Age of Enlightenment in Europe and, in Valencia, its humanistic ideals influenced men such as Gregorio Mayans and Francisco Pérez Bayer, who maintained correspondence with the leading French and German thinkers of the time.