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Gra is a population entity in La Segarra belonging to the municipality of Torrefeta i Florejacs. Barely twenty residents live in this small town with a lot of history, whose origins date back to medieval times.
It is located at the top of an elevation of 470 meters, on the left bank of the Passerell torrent. It preserves an old town, already mentioned in the year 1031, where the old castle stands out, also documented in the 11th century.
As detailed by Albert Turull in The toponyms of the Segarra, the toponym “Gra” does not come from “grano”, but from the phonetic evolution Grada – Graza – Graha – Gra, and the etymology of this number is found in the common noun “grada ” (step).
In this photographic report in La Vanguardia Readers’ Photos we can tour in images some of the corners of its old town, with its alleys and houses with signs of the past, although at the entrance to the town there are more modern homes.
On the eastern side is the parish church of Sant Salvador de Gra, which preserves an apse from the primitive Romanesque construction, although the rest of the temple was rebuilt in the 18th century.
The parish church of Sant Salvador de Gra was built from large regular stone blocks. We see a gable-covered main façade in which a large baroque doorway stands out.
To the right of the façade stands a single-body quadrangular bell tower with four semicircular arches made of bricks at the height of the bells.
Across the street from San Salvador Church, there is a plot of land that is an old cemetery. These days there has been a neighborhood discussion to raze it and make a plaza in this place. The City Council has said no and it remains that way.
As for the rectory, it consists of a building with a patio or garden. It was built by labor, as explained by the neighbors, who also point out that the house has ended up being undersold.
The castle, a monument included in the Inventory of the Architectural Heritage of Catalonia, was the origin of Gra, since it is documented for the first time in 1031, the year in which Bishop Ermengol of Urgell bequeathed an allodio that he owned in Torrefeta, which bordered to the west with the term “Graza”, as it was called then.
In 1040, in the deed of consecration of Santa Maria de la Seu d’Urgell, the existence of the castle of Gra, belonging to the Urgellese canon, considered part of the wider term of the castle of Guissona, in the county of Urgell is recorded.
And thus the complex history of this castle began to be woven throughout the centuries. For example, during the 15th century, it changed hands several times.
We see that it is a three-story building built with courses of irregular ashlars. But it has undergone many interventions that have made its original appearance disappear. Its main façade faces the Plaza del Castell.
It is accessed through a portal with a segmental arch, framed by a smooth stone molding. Unlike the main façade, the rear one has not been so restored and retains original elements.
This patio that I have to admit has been dark in the photograph, but the image has its documentary value, since it is the site where the bread oven was. Here, the whole town could go to make their bread. They tore it down for reasons we wouldn’t understand now.
Among the charming corners of the town of Gra we can find this fountain, where we can read a writing by Jordi Pàmias from July 1962.
Another detail that the town of Gra offers us are the old pikes. Rocks were hollowed out to make them, as can be seen in the images.
It is not clear what they were used for. The neighbors explain that they were to soften the hemp (flax), to make sheets. Unfortunately, they are abandoned, full of rubble; others, with vegetation.
The Oró torrent, as we can see along its course, was an element of local development that allowed the establishment of a network of mills.
Of the Casanova and Garganté mills, both in ruins, both in the building and in the grinding mechanism, only some fragmented elements can be seen, although they had very similar characteristics.
Some interesting architectural elements have survived. On the one hand, the small fish tank that we found about 100 meters from the Casanova mill and, on the other, the orchard aqueduct, a small water conduit made with a crushed stone channel that crossed the Passarell torrent and carried the water to the Garganté mill pond.
