Spanish Aragón Autonomous community (pop., 2001: 1,204,215), northeastern Spain. Roughly coextensive with the historical kingdom of Aragon, it occupies an area of 18,425 sq mi (47,720 sq km). Its capital is Zaragoza (Saragossa). Mountains, including the Pyrenees, dominate the relief north and south of the Ebro River, which bisects Aragon. Established in 1035 by Ramiro I, the historical kingdom grew as land was retaken from the Moors: Zaragoza, the capital of the Almoravid kingdom, fell to Alfonso I of Aragon in 1118, and the reconquest of present-day Aragon was completed by the late 12th century. In the 13th-15th centuries it came to rule Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, and Navarra. In the 15th century Ferdinand married Isabella of Castile, uniting the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile and forming the nucleus of modern Spain. The old kingdom of Aragon survived as an administrative unit until 1833, when it was divided into provinces. Agriculture, mining, and industry, the latter concentrated at Zaragoza, are economically important
The County of Barcelona was founded in the 10th century after the collapse of Charlemagne's empire In 1137 the Counts became Kings of Aragon, a kingdom which included modern-day Catalonia and Roussillon The many feudal castles in western Languedoc bear witness to the rivalry between the kings of France and Aragon, and their need to defend the frontier
The kingdom of Aragon in eastern Spain was the most urbanized of the three powers that held the Iberian peninsula Affected by the same civil unrest of the rest of Spain during the late Middle Ages, peace finally began to take root when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married in 1469 and inherited their thrones in 1474 and 1479 respectively Their development of an efficient central adminstration transformed the two monarchies into the kingdom of Spain
a region of northeastern Spain; a former kingdom that united with Castile in 1479 to form Spain (after the marriage of Ferdinand V and Isabella I) French writer who generalized surrealism to literature (1897-1982)
Along with Castile, a regional kingdom of the Iberian peninsula; pressed reconquest of peninsula from Muslims; developed a vigorous military and religious agenda (p 507)