De Salses a Guardamar i de Fraga a l’Alguer: les comarques de parla catalana una a una. 65/88: la Costera (Central Valencian Country).
La Costera is a shire whose capital city is Xàtiva.
The inhabitants of Xàtiva are known with the nickname "socarrats" (which means "burned"). Xàtiva had been the main city in this area for a very long time, it had officially been given the title of city in the year 1347 and by the 1700s it was the second most populated city in all the Kingdom of València (second only to València itself). But its inhabitants had to face a particular cruelty from king Philip V.
During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1715), the Castillian (Spanish) army militarily occupied the Kingdoms of València, Aragon, Catalonia, and Mallorca. The invader king, Philip V, ended their independence and incorporated them by "right of conquest" to Spain, abolishing their historical forms of government and historical laws, forbidding the use of the Catalan-Valencian language in all official settings, imposing the use of Spanish, forbid many of our culture's holidays, closed down universities, publicly executed thousands and inflicted public humiliations and exile on more, and imposed extremely high taxes to pay for their homeland's militarization. At that moment, the Spanish army started a period that historians have labelled "military terrorism", where they did everything in their hand to impose a state of terror and psychological punishment on the conquered population. Among the punishments, there were massacres, mass deportations, and public torture. More than 30 Catalan towns and cities were burned to the ground, the larger of which was Xàtiva.
The people of Xàtiva had resisted the advancement of the Bourbon army (the Castillian and French armies) but in the end they couldn't resist the much superior artillery brought from France. As a punishment for their resistance, the whole city was set on fire and burned to the ground, the city's name was changed from Xàtiva to the Spanish name "Nueva Colonia de San Felipe" ("New Colony of Saint Philip"), many of its inhabitants were killed and had all their belongings taken (they were sentenced to death without a trial; the Spanish army even killed 73 people -many of whom were women and children- who were praying in a church all at once) and more than 300 Xativan families were deported to Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Philip V's orders were: "demolish all of Xàtiva, don't leave any building standing, not even the churches". They also destroyed all the literary and artistic works as well as historical documents that were made by these people he considered rebels. Instead, they built a monument "designed to commemorate the future ages of the chastisement of rebellious people".
The fire that consumed this big city and burned it to the ground, an event amplified by the Spanish Bourbonic propaganda as a way of saying "look what happens to rebels: submit and don't dare to try any resistance", has remained in the memory of the people of this area. For this reason, the inhabitants of Xàtiva are still jokingly called "burned ones". This is referenced in the iconic Valencian traditional song Malaguenya de Barxeta, with the line "I come from the heart of the Costera, the town of the burned ones, where my Valencian Country is reborn from the ashes" (vinc del cor de la Costera / del poble dels socarrats. / D'allà on renaix de les cendres / el meu País Valencià.)
Besides the tragic history of the Xàtiva Extermination, the Costera shire has many more historical sites. It's also interesting to highlight the Montesa castle, built by the Order of Montesa (the successors of the Knights Templar); as well as the Ancient Iberian site of La Bastida de les Alcusses (5th-4th centuries BC).
Photos from Comunitat Valenciana, Turisme La Costera, Arroz Dacsa, Valencia Bonita, munozmontell/xativafotosoficial, ninosenmochila, Enrique Íñiguez Rodríguez/Wikimedia. More information about Xàtiva's destruction can be found in this article (in Spanish).
