The Clacton of Imperial Rome


We are leaving Canet de Berenguer and heading across the plains to Sagunto.  Before we leave, well, as we leave, we will pass one of those pleasing juxtapositions between old Spain and newer Spain.  The crowded urban houses, large and small;  replaced by low rise apartments and modern villas.



In my personal psychogeography the distance between Canet and Sagunto was much bigger than it actually.  Sagunto is spectacular. It has the sort of rock that all fighting fantasy castles should have.  We will go to it tomorrow. 



Sagunto is another of the twin towns of the plains.  Inland and old and coastal and new.  The bloody great rock in the centre of it made an obvious place to live in troubled times. In 219AD Hannibal besieged the place for eight months.  After a bit of capturing and recapturing it flourish under Roman rule and reached 50,000 inhabitants making it the Clacton of Iberia.  Alright, when population differences across History are taken into account it is, in terms of relevant populations, about the Iberian Cordoba.



It had the sort of History we have got used to. The Visigoths sacked it; the Moors occupied it; James I of Aragon made it his in 1239.  During the Napoleonic Wars the locals, having submitted to the French, noticing how slack their masters were,  retook the place and fortified the town.  A battle ensued and Marshall Suchet’s French beat Joaquin Blake’s Spanish. They subsequently surrendered.   Sagunto got to star in the end of the First Republic, when General Martinez Campos led a rebellion from there in 1874.  Sixtyish years later the place became an important Republican production area, making it the target for Fasc bombers.



One of the big local Industries was wine.  The arrival of phylloxera did for that and citrus fruits took their place. The late twentieth century saw the decline of the traditional steel producers and the replacement with cement, chemicals and specialist steel production.  Volkswagen has established a battery plant there. The Port was developed by Basque businessmen Ramon de la Sota and Eduardo Anzar, who wanted to export iron ore from the hinterland.  The population grew from 6700 in 1900 to around 67,000 today.




We are coming into town across the River Palencia.  Not on the nice bridge, no, on a road that goes through it.  Much of the water is taken for irrigation and occasionally it does seem to be a river.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZM2j8rOymo




We will snickle into town and await our climb tomorrow.

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