Ejea de los Caballeros in the context of Zaragoza (province)

Zaragoza (Spanish pronunciation: [θaɾaˈɣoθa]), also called Saragossa in English, is a province of northern Spain, in the central part of the autonomous community of Aragon. Its capital is the city of Zaragoza, which is also the capital of the autonomous community. Other towns in the province include La Almunia de Doña Godina, Borja, Calatayud, Caspe, Ejea de los Caballeros, Tarazona, and Utebo.

Its area is 17,274 km², which makes it the fourth-largest Spanish province by land area. Its population was 954,811 in 2018, accounting for slightly over 72% of the entire population of Aragon; nearly 75% of those lived in the capital. Its population density was 51/km². It contains 292 municipalities, of which more than half are villages with fewer than 300 people.

Alfonso I (c. 1073/1074 – 7 September 1134), called the Battler or the Warrior (Spanish: el Batallador), was King of Aragon and Navarre from 1104 until his death in 1134. He was the second son of King Sancho Ramírez and successor of his brother Peter I. With his marriage to Urraca, queen regnant of Castile, León and Galicia, in 1109, he began to use, with some justification, the grandiose title Emperor of Spain, formerly employed by his father-in-law, Alfonso VI. Alfonso the Battler earned his sobriquet in the Reconquista. He won his greatest military successes in the middle Ebro, where he conquered Zaragoza in 1118 and later took Ejea, Tudela, Calatayud, Borja, Tarazona, Daroca, and Monreal del Campo. He died in September 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Muslims at the Battle of Fraga.

Alfonso's nickname comes from the Aragonese version of the Chronicle of San Juan de la Peña (c. 1370), which says that "they called him lord Alfonso the battler because in Spain there wasn't as good a knight who won twenty-nine battles" (clamabanlo don Alfonso batallador porque en Espayna no ovo tan buen cavallero que veynte nueve batallas vençió).