Placed in the fandas of the Saint's Saw On Sunday and in the left margin of the river Arba, it belongs to the High ones Five Towns. His 760 meters of altitude and his geography award a special climate. The natural environment is a hereditary aspect, inalienable for the inhabitants of Biel. With 75 % of forest, one lodges in his extensive term varied wealth of flora and fauna.

Biel is a peculiar and surprising Town. More than 80 % of his term is a forest. One of the most important Jewries of Aragon. 74 % of the population in the XVth century was a Jewish woman. Now the visitors abound. With good reason. Two details of drinking and of eating: to the water po nen chlorine "not to contaminate it", and in the inn of the Town they serve one to you fondue of deer or a few chick-peas with Norway lobsters, spinach beets little bolls or corderito roast that forgets the contamination. The Biel bread is famous.

Places to be visited:

Popular houses and nobiliary others
Castle of Biel: The castle settles on a platform rocky, concerning which the church and the hamlet are distributed of the Town. In origin existed an enclosure that was serving to reinforce and to level area forming a small form square approximately egg-shaped, in whose southern end and on the most steep wall tower built it . In the middle of the XVIth century, the archbishop of Saragossa, gift Hernando de Aragón, ordered to do a few reforms that affected to windows of the apartments of room.

Chapel of the Virgin of the Saw
Chapel of San Miguel of Eliso
Saint's chapel Quiteria
Church of St Martin
Jewry

In Holy Week, stands out the day of Palm Sunday one being celebrated procession in which two men carry a cross; and the procession of Saint Entierro who celebrates the Holy Friday, where to the dusk one proceeds, in the door of the chapel of Saint John, to the auction of the steps, which then would go out in procession. Those who more have bid dress themselves in purple tunics and his faces cover with veils of the same one color. On the second Sunday of May, the pilgrimage is realized to the chapel of the Virgin of the Saw. The management holidays, they take place during the 25th and 26th of July in honor to Santiago and Santa Ann. (ftes. and text to see links)

THE JEWRY OF BIEL IN THE XVTH CENTURY for José Luis Lasheras NoTICIA PUBLISHED IN THE NEWSPAPER DIGITAL EJEA (www.ejeadigital.com)

That of Biel is one of the Jewries included inside the Project "Aragon Space Sefarad" that impels the County council of Saragossa with the intention of recovering the Jewries of the province, rescuing this way an important report of our history and with intention as which it serves also to revalue turísticamente our villages. Precisely, the scientific adviser of this one Project is Miguel Angel Motis, the best expert in the history of the Aragonese medieval Jewries and to whom we all owe ours knowledge on the Biel Jewry.

Inside Five Towns, for the number of inhabitants, the Jewry of Biel is the second one in importance, after that of Ejea, and both are between more important eight o'clock of Aragon. But if we relate it to the Christian population, the percentage is really extraordinarily: more than half of the population of Biel was a Jewish woman to the beginning of the XVth century, while in the rest of Aragon or of Spain was placed concerning 5 %. This way in the census of 1405, Christians calculate in Biel 51 Jewish fires (approximately 220 persons) opposite to 46 .

A little further on, in 1485, the Jewish Biel population will be located concerning 325 inhabitants. To calibrate better this information, it is that to bear in mind that the entire population of Ejea was of two thousand inhabitants, that of Huesca of three thousand or that of Teruel of two thousand five hundred. The first Jews come to the town in the XIth century, because Biel is a frontier area and the Aragonese kings favor the establishment of new population.

The Jewry was placed to the north of the locality, from Low square and was occupying practically half of the city center. It had two principal centers: the social one in the square of the Caudevilla ( it was already called this way in the XVth century) that was the commercial district and the place where the Jews were joining to celebrate his holidays; and the area religious, placed in the street Swept Green, where synagog was finding it and which would have the name of the "Career of the Sinoga".

The place of this one, although also it could be a house I Occurred rarely, it is more probably, according to M. A. Motis, which was the house that today it is named of the Pelegrina. It would be placed inside a gallizo, in that now is an agricultural store, while the housing would be her of the rabbi, together with the common services of the Jewry, between they the school of the "mocetes" as this way it is named in documents. After the expulsion, the building of the synagog, in place of being donated to the council on the part of the master of the town, which was the archbishop of Saragossa, as it did in other cases, it was auctioned in the Low square and, after several fortunes went awarded to the council, which used it for municipal dependencies. Nevertheless, it seems that it was not an appetizing good, because the council sells it again in 1523 with a clause in the sale contract that he says that it will keep on using as such until it ends "another house for the Town", that, the surest thing, the current house is of the Town.

As curiosity, the different processions (of Holy Friday, Saint Ann, San Antonio...) they do not go for the street Green Quarter, doing this way a stranger in the trip, because, as it counts the tradition, not they can go on ahead from the "church of the Jews".

These, in addition to devoting themselves to the agriculture, were fundamentally craftsmen, especially of the skin (pelliceros, shoemakers) and of textile (weavers, tailors). But also they were lenders, on the any of one of them, David Jana, who in addition to being a big owner agricultural and business-minded, realized loans for all the Five Towns and even in the Pony area. This rich Jew, as them investigations of M. A. Motis, possibly was living in the one that today names house of the Marquess.

As soon as the Edict of Expulsion was promulgated in 1492, some Jews bieleros chose like destination the near Sangüesa. they embarked others in Barcelona and Tarragona in the direction of Italy, Provence and the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, there were very numerous those who decided to remain, converting to Christianity. Also they were numerous those who again expelled from Navarre, returned to Biel and, on having turned, it seems that there took the "Navarrese" surname, one of the most frequent at present in Biel, in memory of ground that, in the first moment, received them.