Andalusia Andalusia Andalusia ' onMouseout='HidePop("87347")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Gulf_of_Cadiz">Gulf of Cadiz
The Gulf of Cádiz is the arm of the Atlantic Ocean between Cape St. Vincent in Portugal and Cape Trafalgar at the western end of the Strait of Gibraltar. Two major rivers, the Guadalquivir and the Guadiana, as well as smaller rivers, like the Odiel, the Tinto, and the Guadalete, reach the ocean...
coast, at the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto rivers. According to the 2005
censusA "census" is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population.In other words every 10 years...next one would be in 2010 The term is used mostly in connection with...
, the city has a population of 145,150 inhabitants. The town is home to
Recreativo de HuelvaReal Club Recreativo de Huelva, S.A.D. is a Spanish football team based in Huelva in the autonomous community of Andalusia. Founded on 23 December 1889, it is the oldest football team in Spain, and currently plays in the second division, holding home games at the Estadio Nuevo Colombino, which has...
, the oldest football club in Spain. Huelva is notable for being the site of
landfallLandfall can refer to:* Landfall, an arrival at land on a sea or air journey* Landfall , the time at which a storm passes over shorePlace names* Landfall, Minnesota, United StatesEntertainment and literature...
for Hurricane Vince, the only
Tropical CycloneA tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low-pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds and heavy rain. Tropical cyclones feed on heat released when moist air rises, resulting in condensation of water vapor contained in the moist air...
ever to make landfall in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
.
Location and history
A maritime town between the rivers Anas (modern
GuadianaGuadiana , or Odiana, is one of the major rivers of Spain and Portugal. It forms part of the border between the two countries, separating Extremadura and Andalucia from Alentejo and Algarve ....
) and Baetis (modern
GuadalquivirThe Guadalquivir is the second longest river in Spain , and the longest in Andalusia. The Guadalquivir is 657 kilometers long and drains an area of about 58,000 square kilometers...
), it was seated on the estuary of the River Luxia (modern Odiel), and on the road from the mouth of the
AnasAnas is a genus of dabbling ducks. It includes mallards, wigeons, teals, pintails and shovelers in a number of subgenera. Some authorities prefer to elevate the subgenera to genus rank...
to Augusta Emerita (modern
MéridaMérida is the capital of the autonomous community of Extremadura, Spain. It has a population of 55,568 .- History :It was founded in the year 25 BC, with the name of Emerita Augusta by order of Emperor Augustus, to...
).
The city may be the site of Tartessus; by the Phoenicians it was called
Onoba. The
GreeksThe Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in diaspora communities around the world....
kept the name and rendered it . It was in the hands of the
TurdetaniThe Turdetani were an ancient people of the Iberian peninsula , living in the valley of the Guadalquivir in what was to become the Roman Province of Hispania Baetica...
at the time of conquest by
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, and before the conquest it issued silver coins with Iberian legends. It was called both
Onoba Aestuaria or
Onuba (used on coinage) during Roman times, or, simply,
Onoba. The city was incorporated into the Roman province of
Hispania BaeticaHispania Baetica was one of three Imperial Roman provincesin Hispania, . Hispania Baetica was bordered to the west by Lusitania , and to the northeast by Hispania Tarraconensis...
. The Arabs then called it
Walbah and ruled between 712-1250. It suffered substantial damage in the
1755 Lisbon earthquakeThe 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake, took place on 1 November 1755, at around 9:40 in the morning. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami and fires, which caused near-total destruction of Lisbon in the Kingdom of Portugal, and adjoining areas...
.
There are still some Roman remains. The city had a mint; and many coins have been found there bearing the name of the town as Onuba.
Modern Huelva
The local football club,
Recreativo de HuelvaReal Club Recreativo de Huelva, S.A.D. is a Spanish football team based in Huelva in the autonomous community of Andalusia. Founded on 23 December 1889, it is the oldest football team in Spain, and currently plays in the second division, holding home games at the Estadio Nuevo Colombino, which has...
, is the oldest in Spain and was founded in 1889 by workers of
Rio Tinto GroupThe Rio Tinto Group is a diversified, multinational mining and resources group with headquarters in London, England and Melbourne, Australia. The company was founded in 1873, when a multinational consortium of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto river, in Huelva, Spain from the...
, a British mining company.
Port
Nowadays the Port of Huelva is located like one of the Spanish ports of greater activity, competitiveness and growth. It is divided in two sectors: the inner port (in the city) and the outer port (the main one)
Inner Port (a wharf). Constructed in 1972, the East Wharf, replaced constructed harbour facilities of inferior quality between 1900 and 1910. At the moment it is the wharf of the city that smaller traffic has but, to the most centric being, is considered like the authentic port of Huelva. It emphasizes a small limited zone in which is the wharf of the canoes and that connects Huelva with Shady End in summer by means of a tourist boat and the English garages of locomotives. Also it is necessary to as much emphasize in this complex the market as the shipyards of Huelva, in the zone from the entrance to the city by the bridge siphon.
Outer Port (six wharves). In 1965, after the first concessions of the Industrial Pole the works of the Outer Port begin or New Port, to the south of the River Tinto. They began with the oil wharf of Tower River sand, culminating itself with the engineer wharf Juan Gonzalo, constructed between 1972 and 1975. At the end of the 1960s construction of the bridges of the Red (1967) and Siphon of Shady End (1969) was completed. The wharves of Tharsis and Río Tinto and the old fishing boat lost their old activity. In this way, the transference of activity towards the Outer Port experiences a decisive impulse and in 1975, agreeing with the extension of the industrial estate of the new port, in woods of the border, the port obtains an extension of its Zone on watch in the Outer Port, consolidating the character of that zone like present and future axis of the harbour activity of Huelva.
This situation was confirmed still more with the construction in 1981 of the Dock Juan Carlos I. This same development has taken to the port towards the south and has modified the paper of the East Wharf, that it has now as main traffic the fishing and the movement of clean merchandise, like the paper paste, the copper anodes and cathodes and the tripolifosfatos. At the moment his President is D. Jose Antonio Marín Rite, before President of the Parliament Andalusian, and his director, prestigious engineer D. Enrique Perez
Demographics
Huelva has a population of 146,173 (INE 2007). The city experienced a population boom in the
19th centuryThe 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Ottoman, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...
, due to the exploitation of mineral resources in the area and another due to the construction of the Polo de Desarrollo in the 1960s. The city had only 5,377 inhabitants in 1787 which had only risen to 8,519 by 1857. From 1887, the city experienced rapid growth reaching 21,539 residents in 1900 and 56,427 forty years later. By 1970 this figure had risen to 96,689. Further rapid expansion occurred and the number of inhabitants had reached 144,479 by 1991.
In the last ten years, immigration both from abroad and from the surrounding area have caused continued growth in the city’s population. In 2007, the city reached the 145,000 mark whilst the metropolitan area was touching 221,000, encompassing the surrounding areas of
AljaraqueAljaraque is a city located in the province of Huelva, Spain. According to the 2005 census, the city has a population of 14,846 inhabitants.-Demographics:Source: -External links:* - Sistema de Información Multiterritorial de Andalucía...
,
MoguerMoguer is a town located in the province of Huelva, Andalusia, Spain. According to the 2007 census, it has a population of 18,381 inhabitants...
,
San Juan del PuertoSan Juan del Puerto, Spain is a municipality located in the province of Huelva, Spain. In 2005 it had a population of 6,881.-External links:* - Multiterritorial Information System of Andalusia...
,
Punta UmbríaPunta Umbría is a town and municipality with a long beach, in the Province of Huelva, part of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia. According to the 2005 census, the town has a population of 13,736 inhabitants....
,
GibraleónGibraleón is a town and municipality located in the province of Huelva, Spain. According to the 2005 census, the municipality has a population of 11,202 inhabitants.-External links:* - Sistema de Información Multiterritorial de Andalucía...
and
Palos de la FronteraPalos de la Frontera or Palos, is a town and municipality located in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is situated some from the provincial capital, Huelva...
. The 2006 census noted a foreign population of almost 5,000 people in the urban centre, the majority of whom were of
MoroccanMorocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 32 million and an area just under . Its capital is Rabat, and its largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the...
origin.
Christopher Columbus
Among the attractions to visit in this province are the
Columbus sitesChristopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere...
. These sites include the city of Huelva itself,
MoguerMoguer is a town located in the province of Huelva, Andalusia, Spain. According to the 2007 census, it has a population of 18,381 inhabitants...
,
Palos de la FronteraPalos de la Frontera or Palos, is a town and municipality located in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is situated some from the provincial capital, Huelva...
, and the Rábida Monastery. La Rábida is where Columbus sought the aid of the Franciscan brothers in advancing his project of discovery. They introduced him to local rich sailors (the
Pinzón brothersThe Pinzón brothers were Spanish sailors/explorers/fishermen, natives of Palos de la Frontera. All three, Martín Alonso, Francisco Martín and Vicente Yañez, participated in Columbus's first expedition to the New World...
), and, eventually, arranged a meeting in
SevilleSeville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level. The inhabitants of the city are known as Sevillanos or...
with
FerdinandFerdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, de jure uxoris King of Castile and then Regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of his mentally unstable daughter Joanna the...
and
IsabellaIsabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, laid the foundation for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor....
.
Thanks to those meetings, Columbus was able to arrange his first voyage, using resources and local crew (including ship captains). There is a persistent legend that Columbus received advice on how best to undertake a western passage by speaking with
Alonso SánchezAlonso Sánchez was a fifteenth-century mariner and merchant born in Huelva, Spain, on Andalusia's Atlantic coast. It is said that he was a mariner who reached America several years before Colombis did...
, a sailor from the city of Huelva.
In the Huelva area, Columbus exchanged ideas, explored competing theories, and, after a time, put together the political and economic support that had been previously denied to him by other European monarchies.
Artists
The most outstanding artists in Huelva have been: the poet and prize Nobel of Literature
Juan Ramón JiménezJuan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Andalusian poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry."-Biography:Jiménez was born in Moguer, ner Huelva, in...
, the sculptor
Antonio León OrtegaAntonio León Ortega, Ayamonte , December 7, 1907 - Huelva, January 9, 1991, Spanish sculptor, he had his professional education in Madrid and he created a personal style in the Andalusian imagery of the XXth century.- Biography :...
, the writer
Nicolas Tenorio CereroNicolás Tenorio Cerero , Justice Judge and Spanish Historian.- Biography :...
and the painter
Daniel Vázquez DíazDaniel Vázquez Díaz was a Spanish painter.Born in Nerva, Spain, Vázquez Díaz settled in Paris in 1918, where he found cubism to be the ideal form of expression...
.
Other plastic outstanding artists of Huelva are painting José Caballero, Pedro Gómez y Gómez, Antonio Brunt, Mateo Orduña Castellano, Pablo Martínez Coto, Manuel Moreno Díaz, Juan Manuel Seisdedos Romero, Francisco Doménech, Esperanza Abot, José María Labrador, Sebastián García Vázquez, Pilar Barroso, Juan Carlos Castro Crespo, Lola Martín, Antonio Gómez Feu, Rafael Aguilera and Florencio Aguilera Correa.
Events
- Carnaval, fiesta
- Festival de Cine http://www.festicinehuelva.com/
- Fiestas Colombinas, fiesta first week of August
- Fiestas de la Cinta, between 3 - 8 September
- San Sebastián, festival 20 January
- Semana Santa (Easter Week)
- Virgen de la Cinta, fiesta 8 September
- El Rocio
Nearby
Near Huelva lay
Herculis Insula, mentioned by
StraboStrabo was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born in a wealthy family from Amaseia in Pontus , which had recently become part of the Roman Empire.. He studied under various geographers and philosophers; first in Nysa, later in Rome...
(iii. p. 170), called by
Steph. B.Stephen of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus was the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica...
(
s. v.), now
Isla Saltés.
Twin towns
Huelva is
twinnedSister cities, also known as town twinning, is an agreement between towns, cities and even counties in geographically and politically distinct areas to promote cultural and commercial ties...
with:
GenoaGenoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000...
,
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
Houston, United States of America
External links