Vallbona Abbey

The abbey received several privileges from King Alfonso II of Aragon and his wife Sancha of Castile, and was subsequently able to expand thanks to the numerous gifts from noble families.

From Pope Innocent III the abbey received in 1198 and 1200 the grant of Papal immunity and protection of goods, and a bull in 1201 regulated the enclosure and ensured its independence from the episcopate.

[4] Thanks to the numerous properties received through donations and wills, among them that of Count Ermengol VII himself, the sizeable lordship of the abbey was formed between the 12th and 14th centuries, especially in the County of Urgel.

Legal confirmation was achieved under the mandate of Abbess Saurena de Anglesola (1379-1392), who bought from King Peter III of Aragon the civil and criminal jurisdiction of all the monastery's possessions for 22,000 Barcelona salaries.

For this purpose, all the monastery's external buildings were converted (similar to those that still remain in Poblet Abbey and Santes Creus), and only the strictly conventual premises were retained, apart from the church and the cloister.

The Ecclesiastical confiscations of Mendizábal in the 1830s caused them to be exclaustrated for six months, but they were able to continue monastic life and did not suffer as much damage as the monasteries of Poblet or Santes Creus.

Since then the abbey has housed a community of Cistercian nuns uninterruptedly, with the sole exception of the period of the Spanish Civil War, and remains a functioning monastery, although it is open to visitors daily.

Some rooms have been fitted out for accommodation which, together with ceramic works, word processing and computer music scores, and tourist visits to the monastery, represent a good source of income for the community.

Her daughter, Sancha of Aragon, a nun who died in the Holy Land, was also buried here after her body was transferred to the monastery; her sarcophagus is on three inverted columns "to the funeral" as a sign of mourning.

It features a semicircular arch and five archivolts supported by columns and capitals with foliate reliefs similar to the east gallery of the cloister and a tympanum sculpted with the Virgin and Child, surrounded by angels.

Another doorway is located on the church's northern wall, but is now obstructed by a sarcophagus enclosed in an ogival arch as an arcosolium, on which there is a Trinitarian chrismon from the end of the 12th century.

The oldest section, on the south, shows the original sober Romanesque-Cistercian canons: it has three spans formed by three piers, with three rounded arcades supported by columns with undecorated capitals.