Last modified: 2013-09-15 by ivan sache
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The municipality of Poza de la Sal (338 inhabitants in 2009; 8,190 ha; municipal website) is located in the northeast of Burgos Province, 50 km of Burgos.
Poza de la Sal is located near a geological site known as the Poza de la Sal diapir; an elliptic depression of 2.5 km x 2 km in size, rich in evaporites, the diapir has been the place of salt (sal) extraction for ages. Around 350 BC, a settlement named Salionca / Salionica existed some 2 km of the today's site of Poza de la Sal. After the Roman conquest, the settlement became the colony of Flavia Augusta; remains of buildings, of a Roman way and of an aqueduct have been excavated, as well as typical funerary monuments known as oikomorfas (Roman types including elements of the pre-existing local culture). The Roman developed new, specific methods of salt extraction that would be used during the next 1000 years.
The settlement of Poza appeared in the 9th century, named after the
saltern wells (pozos, from Latin puteum, putea). The village,
including the Sts. Justus and Pastor monastery and two churches, was
protected by a fortification, part of the defence line of the newly
resettled area. A document dated 15 January 937 is the first mention
of the salterns; during the early medieval period, the salterns
belonged to monasteries (San Pedro de Cardeña, San Salvador de Oña, Las Huelgas de Burgos) and to the Counts, subsequently the Kings, of Castile. Poza de la Sal was the administrative center of an
alfoz (group of villages), mentioned for the first time in 1011;
including 43 settlements and 60 deserted places, the Alfoz de Poza
formed at the end of the 11th century the most of the merindad (new,
bigger administrative division) of Bureba, one of the five biggest
merindades in the today Burgos Province.
The today's castle and wall were probably built during the reign of
Alfonso VII, following the resettlement of the village in 1135 and its
relocation to its today's site. In 1192, the San Pedro de Cardeña
monastery abandoned its rights on salt to King Alfonso VIII, as well
as the local monastery and church. King Alfonso X attempted to set up
in 1255 a Royal monopoly on salterns, which was implemented, although
partially, in 1348 by Alfonso XI. In 1298, King Fernando IV
transferred Poza de la Sal to Juan Rodríguez de Rojas; one of his
descendants was made Marquis of Poza by King Charles I in 1537. In
1564, King Philip II established a Royal monopoly on the sale of salt
- but not on the ownership of salterns, that would exist until 1868;
the king ordered the building of a salt warehouse while organization
of salt extraction was managed by the Community of the Salt Marshes'
Heirs, grouping all the owners.
The 17th-18th centuries were the gilded ages of Poza de la Sal; the
House of the Royal Salterns was built in 1786-1789, as well as two
more warehouses. Charles IV ordered the building of new salterns,
canals and warehouses in the less-exploited valley of Las Almendreras.
Declining in the late 19th century, salt extraction was eventually
stopped in the 1970s. The Poza de la Sal salterns were registered as
an Historical Place of Cultural Significance by
Royal Decree No. 262 of 22 November 2001.
Poza de la Sal is the birth place of the naturalist and broadcaster Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente (1928-1980). A pioneer in the preservation of the environment in Spain, Rodríguez de la Fuente made the influential TV series El Hombre y la Tierra (The Man and the Earth, 1975-1980), divided into three parts, South America, Iberian Peninsula and North America; the Iberian series included the first animated images of the mysterious Pyrenean Desman (Galemys pyrenaicus). Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente died on 14 March 1980 in an hydroplane accident near Shaktoolik, Alaska, where he was about to film the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Ivan Sache, 14 January 2011
The flag (photo) of Poza de la Sal is prescribed by a Decree adopted on 22 February 2003 by the Municipal Council, signed on 28 February 2003 by the Mayor, and published on 13 March 2003 in the official gazette of Castile and León, No. 50, p. 3,808 (text).
The flag is described as follows:
Flag: Quadrangular flag, with proportions 1:1, argent (or white), a vert (or green) bend, of 0.1 the flag size in the upper left corner, and a sable (or black) bend, of the same size as the first one, in the lower right corner. In the middle are placed the shield of arms and crown [the crowned coat of arms] of the village.
Ivan Sache, 14 January 2011