History
In antiquity, the Ebro was used as the dividing line between Roman (north) and Carthaginian (south) expansions after the First Punic War (264-241 BC). When Rome, fearful of Hannibal's growing influence in the Iberian Peninsula, made the city of Saguntum (considerably south of the Ebro) a protectorate of Rome, Hannibal viewed the treaty as an aggressive action by Rome and used the event as the catalyst to the Second Punic War.
One of the earliest Cistercian monasteries in Spain, Real Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Rueda (Royal Monastery of Our Lady of the Wheel), is located on the banks of the Ebro in Aragon. Established in AD 1202, the edifice survives intact. The monastery is strongly connected to the Ebro, since it used one of the first large waterwheels built for the production of power in Spain. The monastery also diverted flow from the Ebro to create a circulating, hydrological central heating system for its buildings.
The river Ebro in 1938 was the starting ground of one of the most famous Republican offensives of the Spanish Civil War. Known as the Battle of the Ebro, the offensive ended in defeat for the Republican forces, although they enjoyed success in its first stages. They were not able to reach their objective of Gandesa.
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“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
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“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)