Too much in one day – Berga, Manresa, Tàrrega, and Lleida

AUGUST 29, 2024: When planning what to see each day for this trip, for some days I was overambitious, and for other days I did not include enough. Today was definitely an overambitious day, with a plan to visit five different towns. Sometimes I forget that we do not have the energy that we used to. In addition, we had two kids and a granddaughter in tow. Trying to please everyone proved impossible.

We checked out of the family reunion house and drove through the mountains westward. Our first stop was a small bakery / coffee shop in Vilada. This was my second visit to this small store. I had been here a few days earlier with two of my granddaughters. One needed to use a bathroom, and the women behind the counter took her upstairs into her own home to the toilet. When my granddaughter finished, she could not figure out how to flush. It took her a while and then she realized that she needed to pull the string that was hanging down from above. As she told me this story, it brought back so many memories of my great-grandparents house – in their old bathroom, you also needed to pull on a string. It is a bit amazing and very nostalgic that here some toilets are still flushing the very old-fashioned way.

Back to today – after delicious coffee and pastries, we continued southwest towards Berga.

Berga is a town of about 16,000 and you can see very little of what once was the Jewish neighborhood here. In researching the internet, we did not find much information about the history of the Jews of Berga, especially not in English. One source mentioned that there were two Jewish neighborhoods, the old and the new. The author based this on the fact that the street where it is thought that the Jews lived, is today called Balmes Street (Carrer de Balmes), but the locals use a different name. They call it New Street, because it was the location of the new Call, the new Jewish neighborhood. So maybe Berga really had two Jewish neighborhoods – hard to know.

Today, to reach Balmes street, you go to Plaza de San Pere. From there, up a flight of steps, is an arched passageway, that marks the beginning of the street.

Inside the passageway, some plaques have been placed that include Hebrew writings to remind visitors that Jews once lived here. It is possible that further along the street there was even a synagogue. Unfortunately, the signs were not in good shape, some partially, some totally covered with graffiti.

After Berga, we then drove towards our next destination – the small city of Manresa (population about 77,000). Around almost every turn of the highway there were remains of ancient buildings – forts, palaces, farms, etc. So much history! 

Reaching Manresa was a Wow. Three impressive monuments stood out. First was a huge medieval cathedral built on a cliff towering over the river. The historical district surrounds the cathedral. Over the river was a large arched Roman bridge. Along the road was another impressive, huge, old building which is Santa Cova, a Baroque church built over a sacred cave.

The history of the Jews of Manresa is similar to the Jewish history of other towns in Catalonia. The Jews here had their Golden Age in the 12th century when Manresa was said to have had about 500 Jewish families, most of whom lived in a narrow lane called “Grau dels Jueus,” near today’s town hall. It was a large enough community to be considered an aljama. It had a synagogue and a school. Their cemetery was outside the city walls.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Jews here were engaged in manufacturing, trading, moneylending, and agriculture (vineyards.) They did not escape the pogroms of 1391, and many of them then professed to accept Christianity. After 1391, few Jews remained in the town, and in 1492 those still left, sold their property for whatever they could get and left the country.

Today all that there is to see is the narrow lane, now called Baixada del Jueus, which was once the center of the Jewish community. The lane starts from Plaza Mayor and is alongside the current town hall. The old walls of ruined buildings are today decorated with street art.

A sign in Catalan behind the town hall tells the history of the Jews of Manresa. It says that the Jewish community had 30 or 40 families who lived here, and everyone left after the pogroms of 1391.  This is a bit different version than what I had found on the internet. Hard to know what is true – but in both versions, the Jews were once here and after 1492 they were not.

We then visited the tourist office and asked about the Jewish history of the town, but aside from the lane we had visited, they had nothing to add.

We walked through the streets of the old town (as usual for us, it was siesta hour and except for a few restaurants, almost everything was closed). Our kids decided to stay in Manresa for lunch, and Mark and I continued westward to our next destination – Tàrrega.

Like Manresa, Tàrrega also had an Aljama (a self-governing Jewish community.) Today it is a town with about 17,000 inhabitants.

We had two places of Jewish interest to visit there – the Avraham Xalom House and the history museum, which includes an exhibit about local Jewish history. Both these places are only open in the mornings and we knew that they would be closed by the time we got there.

So we arrived to Tàrrega with very low expectations, and were surprised to discover a Jewish History Trail in the area of the old Jewish quarter.  

The Jewish history of Tarrega is a slightly different than the Jewish history of the other towns we visited so far. In the other places, a main turning point in the continuity of the communities seemed to the pogroms of 1391. Here in Tarrega, it happened about 40 years earlier – during the massacre of 1348. The event was fueled by the Black Death (bubonic plague) that ravaged the continent. Jews were the scapegoats for the plague, often accused of spreading the disease, which led to outbreaks of violence against them.

In Tàrrega, on July 5, 1348, an enraged mob attacked the Jewish quarter, resulting in the massacre of a large portion of the town’s Jewish population. Estimates suggest that over 300 Jews were killed in the assault, which was a devastating blow and marked the beginning of the end of the once-thriving Jewish community in the town.

The Jewish History Trail (Itinerari Pel Call de Tàrrega) had six stops, five within the old historic district and one over the river, where the Jewish cemetery was once located. Each stop included a signpost with an explanation of what was once here, and a map of the town with the Jewish route outlined. The information was presented in Catalan, Spanish and English.

The first stop on the route is Carrer de l’Estudi (Street of the Study). This was once the main thoroughfare of the Jewish neighborhood. Entrance to the neighborhood was usually through several gates, and it is assumed that one of the gates was at the end of this street.

Remarkably, several of the buildings on this street still contain remnants from the medieval period. One of them, at 15 Carrer de Estudi, was once the home of Avraham Xalom. Avraham Xalom was born in Tàrrega around 1412 to a Jewish family that traded in fabrics and clothing. He however, opted for medicine and was also known for studying the works of Greek, Arab and Jewish thinkers. He translated several scholastic Christian works into Hebrew and wrote a treatise on philosophy in Hebrew. His house preserves much of its medieval structure, making it a unique testimony of what a home in the Jewish quarter could have been like in the 14th and 15th centuries. Unfortunately, now being siesta hour, it was closed when we arrived there and we only saw it from the outside.

The next stop on the Jewish History Trail was Carrer de les Piques (Piques Street) This was another street that led to the river where both Jews and Christians lived. At the end of this street, near the river was a gate called Gate of the Jews. The arches that connected this street to the adjacent Carrer de la Vilanovare are preserved.

We continued weaving our way through the mostly deserted streets of Tàrrega. The third stop on the Jewish History Trail is Forn del Jueus (Oven of the Jews), which was the location of the Jewish bakery. Jews prepared their dough at home and then came to have it baked in these ovens. Some of the original medieval structure remains.

Next was Carrer del Call (Street of the Jewish Quarter). On this street lived Pere Castelló (1502), whose name, before converting to Christianity in 1492, was Iossef de Besés. He belonged to one of the richest families in the town, who were real estate brokers. Other occupations that the Jews held included moneylenders, doctors, shopkeepers, merchants, artisans and servants.

The last stop on this part of the Jewish History Trail was Placa de la Palla. This square (now a parking lot) did not exist in the Middle Ages. Documents show that this was however, the location of the synagogue and school of the Jews.

Having finished following the trail in the town center, we headed back to our car. On the way we passed the Museo Comarcal del Urgel Tárrega, the local history museum. They have a permanent exhibit titled Tragèdia al Call Tàrrega 1348. The exhibit, which interestingly is prominently displayed on the home page of the museum website, displays archaeological materials recovered from the mass graves in the Jewish cemetery, and give a glimpse of what daily Jewish life in Tàrrega in the 14th century was like. This would have been interesting to see, but the museum was now closed for the day.

Once back in our car, we drove across the river into a suburb of private homes with manicured gardens, looking for the location of the Jewish cemetery. On the street we were on, one plot remained undeveloped, and here we found the sign for the Jewish Cemetery (Neocropolis des Les Roquetes) – the last stop on the Jewish History Trail. The plot was unkept and had only weeds and construction garbage. Unfortunately, the information sign was so worn out that it was unreadable. Here, the ruined sign, seemed to be from natural deterioration from sunlight and neglect, not deliberate vandalism like we saw in many other places. It was here that archeological excavations found six mass graves, confirming the massacre of the Jews in 1348, and which form the backbone of the exhibit in the museum.

It was now late afternoon, and we still had two more cities to go to. Long day, long blog.

From Tàrrega, we continued driving westward towards Lleida. If we arrived in Tàrrega with low expectations and were pleasantly surprised, the opposite was true for Lleida. We went there with high expectations and came away upset and disappointed.

In Catalan, the Jewish neighborhoods were called the Call. This was true for all of Catalonia except for Lleida – here the Jewish Quarter was called La Cuirassa.  The Cuirassa became one of the most important Jewish communities, with royal privileges and a scientific community with its own medical school. However, no material evidence was thought to have remained of the Jewish presence in the city.

After three years of work by archaeologists, historians and architects, they found some indications of the Jewish presence and about six years ago created a self-guided tour called “Voices of the Cuirassa”.  They paved a path through the Cuirassa and landscaped the area. QR codes led to audio stories about the Jews that once lived here and their history. Photos of the project looked very impressive.

Lleida today is large city in Western Catalonia with a population of about 140,000. To reach the old historic district, we first drove through a large industrial area, with what seemed to be many beer manufacturers. We parked in a large underground parking lot, and emerged in the pedestrian streets of old Lleida, lined with many stores and apartments. To reach the Cuirassa, we climbed a steep set of stairs to the top of the hill. The stairs were a foreshadow of what was to come – they were dilapidated, full of weeds and smelling of urine.

At the top of the stairs was a plaza (and as we discovered, an elevator). From the plaza is a lookout over the area that was once the Jewish quarter. It might once have been an impressive place to visit and learn the history, but not now.

The audio guides were not really working. The signage, in Catalan, English, French and Hebrew, was destroyed. Antisemitic graffiti further marred the atmosphere. It now could only be described as a place of good intentions gone wrong.

Not being ones to give up so easily, we followed the path and learned what we could. Sometimes the English was readable, other times the Hebrew and if those did not work, we could Google translate the Catalan or French.

We learned that approximately 500 Jews lived in Lleida in the 14th century, compromising about 13% of the city’s population. It was the most important Jewish community in the Crown on Aragon. Archeologist found here the remains of a parchment workshop and several of the underground storage vats for the parchment are now visible.

After Lleida, we continued driving and crossed the border from Catalonia into Aragon. As we headed westward, the landscape changed. No more green mountains. Here the landscape resembled the south of Israel – dry, sparse vegetation, beige and red earthen hills.

For the night, we had reservations in an Airbnb in the town of Fraga, the fifth town that we were to visit. By the time we arrived there, we were too tired to look around and we put off our exploring of Fraga for tomorrow. Four towns for one day was more than enough.