ZARAGOZA

also spelled Saragossa, provincia, in the comunidad autnoma (autonomous community) of Aragon, northeastern Spain. Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, it formed the old kingdom of Aragon. It extends north and south of the middle course of the Ebro River; it reaches the foot of the Pyrenees (north) and is bounded west by the provinces of Navarra, Logroo, and Soria, south by Guadalajara and Teruel, and east and northeast by Tarragona, Lrida, and Huesca. The relief is mostly gently rolling tableland drained by the Ebro and its tributaries. Scarce annual rainfall of less than 1518 inches (380460 mm) makes irrigation important. All the main settlements are in the irrigated valleys, the Ebro being the chief link, with the Jaln Valley ranking next in importance. Cereals, especially wheat and barley, are the mainstay of the economy, followed by alfalfa, stock raising, industrial crops such as sugar beets, and horticulture. From Daroca down the Jiloca Valley into the Jaln Valley is an important fruit-growing district. Industry is largely concentrated in the provincial capital, Zaragoza (q.v.) city. Apart from the latter, the main population centres are Calatayud, Tarazona de Aragn, Caspe, Ejea de los Caballeros, and Tauste. Area 6,661 square miles (17,252 square km). Pop. (1992 est.) 842,722. English Saragossa capital of Zaragoza province, in the autonomous community (region) of Aragon, northeastern Spain, lying on the south bank of the Ro Ebro (there bridged). Toward the end of the 1st century BC, the Celtiberian town of Salduba at the site was taken by the Romans, who made it a colony under Emperor Augustus with the name of Caesaraugusta (from which its Arabic name Saraqustah and its present name were derived). The chief commercial and military station in the Ebro valley, it was one of the first towns in Spain to be Christianized, and it had a bishop by the middle of the 3rd century AD. In 380 a church synod at Zaragoza condemned the Priscillianist heresy of absolute renunciation of all sense pleasures. After falling to the Germanic Suebi and then to the Visigoths in the 5th century, the town was taken by the Moors c. 714. In 778 it was besieged by the Frankish king Charlemagne, who had to withdraw because of a Saxon rebellion in his domain. After being captured by the Almoravids in 1110, Zaragoza was taken by King Alfonso I of Aragon in 1118 and thereafter enjoyed three and a half centuries of prosperity as capital of Aragon. In the Peninsular War it was famed for the heroic resistance of its citizens under Gen. Jos de Palafox y Melzi during a protracted siege (180809) by the French, who finally took the city. Among the defenders was Mara Augustn, the Maid of Saragossa, whose exploits are described in Lord Byron's poem Childe Harold. The seat of an archbishop, Zaragoza has two cathedrals, the older of which is the Catedral de La Seo (Latin sedes), or Catedral del Salvador, chiefly a Gothic building (11191520) but showing some traces of the earlier Romanesque church built on the site of the first mosque erected in Spain. The Catedral Nuestra Seora del Pilar, dedicated to the Virgin of the Pillar who is patron of all Spain, commemorates the traditional appearance on Jan. 2, AD 40, of the Virgin Mary standing on a pillar erected in honour of Saint James the Great, whose shrine is at Santiago de Compostela. The cathedral was begun in 1681 to a design by Francisco Herrera the Younger (El Mozo) and contains some frescos by Goya. The 14th-century Gothic churches of San Pablo and the Magdalena and the Renaissance church of Santa Engracia are also notable. Outstanding secular buildings include La Lonja, or The Exchange, in Plateresque Gothic style; the Palace of the Counts of Luna (1537), in which the Court of Justice sits; and the 17th-century Palace of the Condes de Sstago y Argillo. The Aljafera Palace, to the west of the city, contains an oratory dome and tower that are among Spain's best examples of Islamic civil architecture. The University of Zaragoza was founded in 1474, the medical school being its most famous faculty, but the buildings date from later periods. Zaragoza is an industrial centre and the site of the annual National Trade Fair, which begins October 12. Its industries have expanded with the supply of hydroelectric power from the dams in the Aragonese Pyrenees and of oil from the pipeline from Rota (near Cdiz). It is also a busy railway junction and a trade centre for the agricultural products of the surrounding fertile river basin watered by the Canal Imperial and the Ebro, Huerta, and Gllego rivers. Pop. (1982 est.) 608,725.