Pueblo viejo de Rodén | Fuentes de Ebro | Zaragoza

The old town of Rodén sits on a 300-metre-high mound, from which you can see the valley of the Ginel River, which, a few metres to the northeast of the town, flows into the Ebro River. Its houses and buildings intended for secondary activities are arranged in a staggered fashion on the northern slope.

During the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, it was the scene of various war episodes of great historical significance. As a result, the town suffered great damage.

During the summer of 1937, the town of Rodén was destroyed, with the wooden construction elements (window frames, doors, beams, etc.) of the buildings being dismantled. The Republican troops required construction elements to reinforce trenches and the front line of Belchite; a front that was in the fray throughout that summer. At the end of the war, Regiones Devastadas planned a new town on the slopes of the hill, at the foot of the ruins of the old one, in the plain of the Ginel river and on the edge of the road and the future AVE line.

Today, the old town of Rodén draws a landscape of ruins, which allows us to understand and learn about the context of the first years of the War and the course of events on the Belchite front and the future of the population that decided to return to a devastated town and start a new life in the new one.

Rodén Viejo is one of the six towns in Spain that were not rebuilt at the end of the Civil War, but rather it was decided to build a new one next to the devastated one. These six towns (Valdeanchete, Montarron and Gajanejos, in the province of Guadalajara; Belchite and Rodén, in the province of Zaragoza; and Corbera de Ebro, in the province of Tarragona) are testimony to the devastation caused by the war. Only Belchite, Rodén and Corbera de Ebro present a conservation of monumental ruins.