Tortosa

Tortosa stands on the lower Ebro beneath the fortified height of La Suda, taken from its Almoravid governor by Ramon Berenguer IV in 1148 and added to the Crown of Aragon. In 1413 a religious disputation began here between Jewish rabbis and Christian theologians under the patronage of Benedict XIII, during a time of growing pressure on Jews to convert. The cathedral of Santa Maria was begun in 1347 and consecrated in 1597.

In 1578 the city opened the College of Sant Jordi and Sant Domènec, its former university. Tortosa stayed loyal to Catalonia in the Reapers' War of 1640. In the War of the Spanish Succession it changed hands: Archduke Charles's partisans took it in September 1705, and in 1708 the Duke of Orléans besieged it with 28,000 men for a month and took it for Philip V. The French occupied it in January 1811, an event inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and it was freed in 1814.