Horta de Pinyana

Some historical notes on the landscape of Horta de Pinyana:

• Landscape devoted mainly to agriculture, especially sweet fruit trees (apple, peach, pear and others), but there are also extensive herbaceous crops (maize and alfalfa). Viticulture was very important in the Middle Ages and stretched everywhere accompanied by olive trees and other fruit trees like the walnut. These crops were located very close to populated settlements and small plots.
• Built in the 12th century, the Pinyana canal, along with its irrigation ditches, is the structure that helps us to understand the agricultural nature of historical irrigation practices in this landscape and the piecemeal, small-size morphology of the cultivated plots, which generally run perpendicular to the canals and irrigation ditches. This canal currently irrigates around 8,500 hectares.
• The urban area around Lleida determines the existence of mobility, communication and energy infrastructure (high-speed train (TGV) line, dual carriageway A2 and motorway AP2) and disperse urban settlement. The superimposition of infrastructure, farms and industrial estates creates visual conditions of mottled colours, introduces angular lines that have transformed the original state of the soil over the years and encourages the loss of rural agriculture and the agricultural patterns that characterise it.
• North of Horta de Pinyana, the population is of a more rural and disseminated type. In some cases, the type of settlement in existence during the Muslim period has been conserved, based on organisation into towers, meaning into unfortified population centres where different families lived. Some of these towers have survived to the present day: Torre-serona, Torrefarrera and Torre Rosselló (Rosselló today). Centuries later, the landscape was gradually dotted with new agricultural towers made of adobe or mud; these were not for living in but rather for storing farming tools and lodging during the months of greatest activity in the fields. Agricultural intensification and specialisation and a great demand for products also contributed to a permanent settlement in the field, a situation that led to enlarging the traditional tower and building annexed buildings. Starting in the 1980s, people began to leave the towers as places of residence and move to the city or a nearby town, and these buildings turned into places of leisure in a gardened setting.

More information on Horta de Pinyana in the Landscape Catalog of Terres de Lleida:

• Fitxa de la unitat
• Cartography of the unit
• Full catalog

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Cartography of the historic landscape:

Detail maps in PDF format between 30 and 60 Mb. They may take a minute or so to open.

• Roman era:
  Synthesis
• Roman era:
  Centuriation A
• Roman era:
  Centuriation B
• Roman era:
  Centuriation C
• Roman era:
  Centuriation D
• Contemporary times (changes 1956-2000)
• Path and road network
• Hydrographic network
• Historic landscape characteristics