CIUTADELLA: Ciutadella can pride itself on very ancient foundations. The bishop Sever, in his famous encyclical letter (418), tells us, " There are two small towns founded on the island, to which they give name according to their situation : Jammona looks to the west....". But we believe the Semitic establishment superimposed an already existent stone age village. After 123 AD, date of which Quintus Cecilius Metellus conquered the Balearics for Rome, Jammona was a small village, possibly of a military nature, a "parvum oppidum". The areas of Saint Nicholas street and Camí de Baix, have produced abundant finds - mosaics, tombs, ceramics and small metal pieces. Very soon, Ciutadella became a Roman municipal, the "Municipium Flavium lamontarum", , and its Episcopal once under Christianity - we know Sever, who reigned as Bishop, not only over our town but also over the whole island ; and Macari, whom in 484 was called to Cartago by the King Hunneric-.
Our town, like the whole island, was subject to the power of the Vandals and, afterwards, incorporated to the Byzantine Empire (534). But it seems that, with time, Menorca enjoyed an almost total independence. From the end of the 7th Century the Muslims began to devastate it on repeated spells, even though the total occupation was delayed until the beginning of the 10th Century.
During the Muslim domination, the old Jammona was the Medina Menurca, the capital of the island, where the leader resided- there is a remainder on the street del Palau which still shows the exact location of the building-.
It had a walled enclosure or qasr, a main Mosque - the actual location of which is where the Cathedral stands, the minaret was converted into a bell tower -, and other secondary ones, cemeteries, etc. It was the only town of such importance of Menurca. After a period of vassalage (1231-1287) during which the island prospered economically, culturally and demographically, it was conquered by King Alfonso III the Liberal, 701 years ago. Little remains of the Muslim culture - some construction and ceramic techniques-. The population was sold as slaves and the land was populated by "nice Catalan people"- Muntaner-.
Alfonso III confirmed the condition of Capital to the now Catalan Ciutadella of Menorca, where the tribunals of government, royal patrimony and the general mayors office were to be established, and the Governor, the Paborde (ecclesiastic head of the island), and the cavaliers all made their residencies. The organiser of the most important aspects of Menorcan life was James II of Mallorca : he established the system of defence (the cavalry), the parochial system, the monetary system, etc. All this in 1301.
The struggles between the dynasties of the House of Aragon and that of Mallorca, under which Menorca lived from 1298, proceed the conquest of the Balearic by Peter IV the Ceremonious. During a great part of the Middle ages, the University of Ciutadella - Municipal entity of great power - was the only on the island, even during the 14th Century when other outside populations emerged, it still maintained its supremacy. Run by four judges - one from each class - and ten councillors. Despite its demographic weakness - it never passed, until 16th Century, 3,500 inhabitants -, Ciutadella represented half of the islands population. Our town suffered the plague in 1348, the "Antijueves" violence in 1291, two civil wars in the 15th Century, and an almost permanent tension between the privileged classes and those less favoured. When it was recovering from all of this , in 1558 witnessed the most heroic act of its haserdous history : a powerful Turkish Armada, composed of 140 ships and 15,000 soldiers, put the town under siege for eight days, the town who only had a few hundred men to defend itself. The resistance was fierce but useful. All of Ciutadella's people - 3,099 - who survived were taken as slaves to Turkey together with other inhabitants of surrounding villages - total of 3,452 -. Very few to return. Even today, every 9th of July we commemorate the "year of the atrocity" with a solemn act where the Constantinople Act is read, which describes the facts.
The town has to be reconstructed over the ruins : houses and churches, ramparts and convents were rebuilt according to the intermittent rhythm marked by the economic difficulties.
The 17th Century was that of maturity of the islands capital : churches were built like Sant Crist dels paraires ; convents, like that of Socors ; palaces of the cavalier families, who were becoming wealthier due to the politics of matrimony and inheritance ; the first noble titles were achieved ; the ramparts are completed, etc. No lacking of demographic crisis', like the plague of 1652 which produced hundreds of deaths, pirate attacks, conflicts between the University and the Governors, plague of rats and locusts, prolonged droughts, banditry, etc.
The dominion of the Spanish Crown ends in 1708, the year in which an English squadron occupies the island in the of the Archduke Charles of Austria. The Utrecht treaty in 1713 consolidates the British occupation which signifies for Ciutadella the loss as the Capital when, in February of 1722, Richard Kane transfers to Maó the tribunals and Government offices, even though the people of Ciutadella defend, until the start of the19th Century, their condition as capital. The French domination (1756-1763) produced a cultural current of great importance and opened many souls to the ideas ruling in Europe. The stage of the Spanish domination which followed the second British domination, made possible an old wish of Ciutadella : to reinstate its own bishopric (1795). The character of the Episcopal town is still very visible today, and here its appropriate to remember advice given by Unamuno to a friend of his : "Don't stop visiting small towns that aren't provincial capitals and bishoprics ; they are all extremely interesting".
The 19th Century signified the awakening : Ciutadella passes from being an eminently agricultural town, surrounded by ramparts, with narrow streets to being a town with ample that expanded from the Contramurada (rampart). It had now an industrial economy, fruit of the implantation of shoe manufacture, demographics on a constant increase that passes from 7,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the 19th Century to 21,000 now, and economic dynamics and culture that any of our visitors can appreciate. This is the Ciutadella that you will find, modern but yet traditional.
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