Huelva


Huelva is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is located along the Gulf of Cádiz coast, in the estuary formed by the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto rivers. Being less exposed to moderating waters than other coastal cities through the inlet shelter warms up Huelva's summers in comparison to fellow Andalusian coastal cities. According to the 2010 census, the city had a population of 149,410. Huelva is home to Recreativo de Huelva, the oldest football club in Spain.
It has been tentatively defended the existence of pre-Phoenician settlement on the current urban limits since circa 1250 BC, with Phoenicians establishing a stable colony roughly by the 9th century BC.

History

Ancient history

The city may be the site of Tartessus; it was called ʿunʿu baʿl by the Phoenicians. The Greeks kept the name and rendered it Ὄνοβα. It was in the hands of the Turdetani at the time of conquest by Rome, and before the conquest it issued silver coins with Iberian legends. It was called both Onoba Aestuaria or Onuba during Roman times, or, simply, Onoba. The city was incorporated into the Roman province of Hispania Baetica. According to the Antonine Itinerary, it was a maritime town between the rivers Anas, and Baetis ; it was situated on the estuary of the River Luxia, and on the road from the mouth of the Anas to Augusta Emerita. There are still some Roman remains. The city had a mint; and many coins have been found there bearing the name of the town as Onuba. Modern inhabitants are called Onubenses in Spanish. Part of a large wooden wheel that was originally used to drain a copper mine in Huelva was discovered in the late nineteenth century. Dating to the Roman times, it was donated by the British mining company Rio Tinto to the British Museum in 1889.

Middle ages

Soon after the beginning of the Umayyad invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, Onuba was seized by the troops of Musa ibn Nusayr by April 712. The Arabs then called it ولبة.
During the fitna of al-Andalus a weak and ephemeral taifa emerged following the demise of the Umayyad control over the area: the bakrid taifa of Saltés and Huelva, longing from 1012 to 1051, when it was annexed by the more powerful Taifa of Seville, to be later occupied by the Almoravids in 1091. By 1262, the city —then part of the Taifa of Niebla— was taken by Alfonso X of Castile.
Following the Christian conquest, the city became a realengo for a brief spell until it was ceded in Lordship to Admiral in 1293 by Sancho IV of Castile. After a spell during which Huelva was probably controlled by Seville, the tenency of the lordship was passed to several lords, including Alonso Meléndez de Guzmán —brother of Eleanor de Guzmán— and Juan Alfonso de la Cerda. Huelva, again a realengo for a small period during the reign of Peter I, saw its privileges confirmed and was granted the right to choose the alcalde and the alguacil in 1351. The lordship was soon given to King's Mistress María de Padilla.

Early modern history

It suffered substantial damage in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.

Modern history

Mines in the countryside send copper and pyrite to the port for export. From about 1873, the most important company in the area was Rio Tinto, the British mining firm.
The mining operations caused severe sulfur dioxide pollution and were frequently accompanied by protests of local farmers, peasants and miners, allied under the anarchist syndicalist leader Maximiliano Tornet. On 4 February 1888, the Pavi Regiment of the Spanish Army opened fire on demonstrators at the village plaza of Rio Tinto. Historians estimate the number of deaths between 100 and 200. Environmentalists from the nearby Nerva village referred to 1888 as the "year of shots" a hundred years later in their protests against the province government's plans to site a large waste dump in a disused mine in the 1990s.
The local football club, Recreativo de Huelva was founded in 1889 by workers of Rio Tinto Group, a British mining company. Nicknamed the "Dean" of Spanish football, it is the longest living football club in the country.
The 17–18 July 1936 military coup d'état that started the Spanish Civil War failed in the city and much of the province. However, on 27 July 500 guardias civiles rose in arms against the Republic in the city, with the authorities escaping and later being shot down. Two days later, on 29 July, a rebel column from Seville on behalf of Gonzalo Queipo de Llano took control of the city. For the rest of the conflict it remained to the rear of the zone controlled by the Rebel faction. The ensuing Francoist repression took a heavy toll, with an estimated total of deaths all over the province for the rearguard and post-war repression.
During World War II, the city was a hub of espionage activities led by members of the large British and German communities. German activity centered on reporting British shipping moving in and out of the Atlantic. Most famously, the city was the location where Operation Mincemeat allowed a body carrying false information to wash ashore.
25 years after the city was declared a Polo de Desarrollo Industrial in 1964, the population had nearly doubled.
On 11 October 2005, Hurricane Vince made landfall in Huelva as a tropical depression.

Geography

;Location
Huelva is located in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in the Gulf of Cádiz, facing the Atlantic Ocean. The coastline straddling along the Gulf of Cádiz is known as Costa de la Luz. The city lies next to the estuary formed by the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto, sandwiched in between both rivers.
A rather wide estuary in ancient times, the estuary of Huelva progressively silted up to a large extent.

Transportation

Huelva is home to Grupo Damas, a provincial bus company. Huelva's train station is now a shadow of its former self, and exists on a spur line. There are no trains to Portugal. Huelva's port hosts Naviera Armas' ferry Volcan del Teide, on which one can travel weekly to Arrecife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Huelva does not have an airport. The closest airports to the city are Faro Airport and Seville Airport.

Port

The is divided in two sectors: the inner port and the outer port :
The Muelle de Riotinto was built in 1874-76 for the export of ore from Huelva to Britain. It is no longer in commercial use but is now a tourist attraction.

Demographics

Huelva had a population of 149,410 in 2010. The city experienced a population boom in the nineteenth century, due to the exploitation of mineral resources in the area, and another with the construction of the Polo de Desarrollo in the 1960s. It had a population of 5,377 inhabitants in 1787, which had risen to only 8,519 by 1857. From 1887, the city experienced rapid growth, reaching 21,539 residents in 1900, 56,427 in 1940, and 96,689 in 1970. Rapid expansion occurred in the following decades and the population reached 141,479 by 1991.
In the last ten years, immigration both from abroad and from the surrounding area have sustained population growth. In 2007, the city reached the 145,000 mark, while the metropolitan area had nearly 232,000 inhabitants, encompassing the surrounding areas of Aljaraque, Moguer, San Juan del Puerto, Punta Umbría, Gibraleón, and Palos de la Frontera. The 2006 census recorded a foreign population of almost 5,000 people in the urban centre, the majority of whom were of Moroccan origin.

Climate

Huelva and its metropolitan area have a Subtropical-Mediterranean climate, characterized by mild and wet winters and long warm to hot and dry summers. The average annual temperature is during the day and at night. The average annual precipitation is per year, there are about 52 rainy days per year. Extreme temperatures have been recorded on 25 July 2004 and recorded on 28 January 2005 at Ronda Este.
'', a 37-metre-tall sculpture by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney celebrating the Columbian exploration of the Americas.

Artists

The most well-known artists in Huelva have been: the poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Juan Ramón Jiménez, the sculptor Antonio León Ortega, the writer Nicolas Tenorio Cerero and the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz.

Other outstanding artists from Huelva include the painters José Caballero, Pedro Gómez y Gómez, Antonio Brunt, Mateo Orduña Castellano, Pablo Martínez Coto, Manuel Moreno Díaz, Juan Manuel Seisdedos Romero, Francisco Doménech, Esperanza Abot, José María Labrador, Sebastián García Vázquez, Pilar Barroso, Juan Carlos Castro Crespo, Lola Martín, Antonio Gómez Feu, Rafael Aguilera, and Florencio Aguilera Correa. Miguel Biez, called el Litri, is perhaps the town's most famous artist; he was gored in a bullfight in 1929.

Events

Near Huelva lay Herculis Insula, mentioned by Strabo, called Ἡράκλεια by Steph. B., now Isla Saltés.

International relations

Twin towns – Sister cities

Huelva is twinned with:

  • Tanger, Morocco
  • Faro, Portugal
  • Piteşti, Romania
  • Győr, Hungary