TOUR OF EL ALFOZ (MUNICIPAL TERRITORY)

While the city was growing, the marshy plain surrounding it was being transformed into a widespread and fertile agricultural area watered by a complicated system of irrigation channels, which still branch out and reach every corner of our land. Incidentally, nowadays the larger irrigation channels ("acequia madre"), keep the name which the "Murcíes" or Murcian Muslims gave them: "Acequia de Alquibla" (from the South) and "Acequia de Aljufia" (from the North). When you visit places as picturesque as "El Azud de la Contraparada", between Javalí Viejo and Javalí Nuevo, or the water wheel of La Ñora, it is easy to appreciate the ingenuity and hard work of our ancestors and the miracle which is the Murcian "Huerta".

We all know that the Middle Ages were a period of great instability. War was commonplace and people were forced to take refuge in fortifications near to the places where they lived and worked the land.

In Murcia, there were many castles on the mountainous outskirts of the city. However, the conservation and restoration efforts are aimed at those which have been best conserved: The Castle of la Luz, situated in Santa Catalina, in the south and the Castle of Monteagudo, in the village which bears the same name, to the north of the city.

It is in Monteagudo that the Murcian Emirs who governed "La Cora de Tudmir" (as our region was known in that time) made their summer residence. In the same way as Medina Azahara in Cordoba or The Alhambra in Granada, The Royal Almunia of Murcia had large gardens watered by special reservoirs, and several fortified palaces set apart from the nearby castle: El Castillejo, Larache, y El Cabezo de Torres.