Zaragoza
municipality in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain

Zaragoza (Spanish: [θaɾaˈɣoθa] ), traditionally known in English as Saragossa ( SARR-ə-GOSS-ə), is the capital city of the province of Zaragoza and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributaries, the Huerva and the Gállego, roughly in the centre of both Aragon and the Ebro basin.
In the 1st century BCE, Romans founded the colony of Caesaraugusta over the Sedetani settlement of Salduie. The city was the capital of the Upper March of Al-Andalus under Umayyad rule, later thriving as a capital of a rump state ruled by the Banu Hud, the taifa of Zaragoza. It swiftly became the political and spiritual centre of the Kingdom of Aragon after the 1118 Christian conquest, and its inhabitants managed to preserve and consolidate initially granted privileges over the course of the Late Middle Ages.
As of 2025, Zaragoza had a population of 699,007 inhabitants, making it the fourth most populous in Spain, on a land area of 973.78 square kilometres (375.98 square miles) and is the centre of a metropolitan area of around 0.76 million. The municipality is home to more than 50 percent of the Aragonese population. The city lies at an elevation of about 208 metres (682 feet) above sea level.
Zaragoza hosted Expo 2008 in mid-2008, a world's fair on water and sustainable development. It was also a candidate for the European Capital of Culture in 2016.
“Zaragoza” enters the record as municipality in the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Zaragoza, municipality and autonomous can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Zaragoza” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Zaragoza, municipality and autonomous provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10305. VIAF identifies the subject as 1169158188256820260008. The Library of Congress control number is n79022947. Authority coordinates are 41.650, -0.883. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1118, 2025, 2008 and 2016.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Zaragoza”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Zaragoza primary sources, Zaragoza archive and Zaragoza research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Zaragoza”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Zaragoza” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.