Wharf of the Caravels

The Friary of La Rábida (in full, Spanish: Convento de Santa María de la Rábida) is a Franciscan friary in the southern Spanish town of Palos de la Frontera, in the province of Huelva and the autonomous region of Andalucia. The friary is located 13 km (8 mi) south of the city of Huelva, where the Tinto and Odiel rivers meet. The Friary of La Rábida has been Franciscan property since the thirteenth century. It was founded in 1261; the evidence is a papal bull issued by Pope Benedict XIII in that year, allowing Friar Juan Rodríguez and his companions to establish a community on the coast of Andalucia. The first Christian building on the site was constructed over a pre-existing Almohad ribat that lends its name (rábida or rápita, meaning "watchtower" in Arabic) to the present monastery. The Franciscans have held great influence in the region ever since. The buildings standing on the site today were erected in stages in the late fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century. The friary, and the church associated with it, display elements of Gothic and Moorish revival architecture; their walls are decorated with frescos by the twentieth-century Spanish artist, Daniel Vázquez Diaz (1882-1969). There is also a cloister and a museum, where numerous relics of the discovery of the Americas are displayed. The buildings on the site have nearly 20,000 sq ft (1,858 m2) of floor space and an irregular floor plan. Throughout its five hundred years of existence, the monastery has been refurbished and repaired countless times, but the most extensive modifications were undertaken as a result of damage from the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Christopher Columbus stayed at the friary two years before his famous first voyage, after learning that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had rejected his request for outfitting an expedition in search of the Indies. With the intervention of the guardian of La Rábida and the confessor to Isabella, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, he was able to have his proposal heard. The friary was declared a Spanish National Monument in 1856. In 2016 it was added to the Tentative List of World Heritage by UNESCO along with the Columbian Places.

The Monument to the Discoverers or 400th Anniversary Column (Spanish: Monumento a los descubridores or Columna del IV Centenario) is an instance of public art in Palos de la Frontera, Spain. It is dedicated to the "discoverers" of the Americas.

The Río Tinto (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈri.o ˈtinto], red river or Tinto River) is a highly toxic river in southwestern Spain that rises in the Sierra Morena mountains of Andalusia. It flows generally south-southwest, reaching the Gulf of Cádiz at Huelva. The Rio Tinto river has a unique red and orange colour derived from its chemical makeup that is extremely acidic and with very high levels of iron and heavy metals.The river maintains its colour for an approximate length of 50 kilometres. After the 50 kilometre mark, the chemistry that makes the Rio Tinto river so unique appears to slowly decline, as does the odd colouring. The location where the chemistry of the river is altered is near a town called Niebla. The river's chemistry begins to significantly change following the town of Niebla owing to the fact that the Rio Tinto blends itself with other streams that are connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The river is approximately 100 km (62 mi) long and is located within the Iberian Pyrite Belt. This area has large amounts of ore and sulfide deposits. The Rio Tinto area has been the site of approximately 5,000 years of ore mining, including copper, silver, gold, and other minerals, extracted as far as 20 kilometres from the river shores. As a possible result of the mining, the Río Tinto is notable for being very acidic (pH 2) and its deep reddish hue is due to iron dissolved in the water. Acid mine drainage from the mines leads to severe environmental problems because the acidity (low pH) dissolves heavy metals into the water. It is not clear how much acid drainage has come from natural processes and how much has come from mining. There are severe environmental concerns over the pollution in the river.Although the river represents a harsh environment for life, some microorganisms classified as extremophiles do thrive in these conditions. Such life forms include certain species of bacteria, algae and heterotrophs.

The Monument to Columbus (Spanish: Monumento a Colón), also known as Monument to the Discovering Faith (Spanish: Monumento a la Fe Descubridora) is a monument in Huelva, Spain. It is a work by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Funded via a popular subscription in the United States channeled by the Columbus Memorial Fund Inc., the monument, 37-metre high, was built from 1927 to 1929. Erected on the Punta del Sebo, the confluence of the Tinto and Odiel rivers, it was inaugurated on 21 April 1929, during a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Miguel Primo de Rivera and the US ambassador Ogden H. Hammond.The sculpted man (leaning on a Tau cross) is sometimes described as representing a friar from La Rábida, yet it originally was described (including by the author herself) as a statue of Christopher Columbus.It consists of a mortar structure covered by ashlar masonry (calcarenite).

The Taifa of Saltés and Huelva (Arabic: طائفة ولبة وشلطيش) was a medieval Arab taifa kingdom that existed in southern Iberia from around 1012 to 1051. From 1051 until 1091 it was under the forcible control of Seville, by Abbad II al-Mu'tadid.The geographer al-Bakri (d. 1094) was born in the taifa of Saltés and Huelva.

Palos de la Frontera (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpalos ðe la fɾonˈteɾa]) is a town and municipality located in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is situated some 13 km (8 mi) from the provincial capital, Huelva. According to the 2015 census, the city had a population of 10,365. It is most famous for being the place from which Columbus set sail in 1492, eventually reaching America.

The Fontanilla is the former public fountain of Palos de la Frontera in Spain where, according to tradition, these fountains provided the water for the ships of Christopher Columbus's first voyage—the Santa María, the Niña, and the Pinta—when, on 3 August 1492, they departed from Palos de la Frontera, captained by Columbus and by Palos's own Pinzón Brothers upon the voyage widely considered to have led the "discovery" of what historians term the "New World". La Fontanilla is the least dramatic, but perhaps the most original and authentic monument among the so-called Lugares colombinos, the places in Huelva closely associated with Columbus's first voyage.

Estadio Nuevo Colombino is a multi-purpose stadium in Huelva, Spain. It is currently used mostly for football matches and is the home ground of Recreativo de Huelva. Football was first introduced to Spain in Huelva and it still hosts the annual Trofeo Colombino, one of the traditional curtain-raisers to the Spanish football season. With a capacity of 21,670 seats, it is the 30th-largest stadium in Spain and the 6th-largest in Andalusia. Opened in November 2001, it replaced Estadio Colombino.Estadio Nuevo Colombino hosted a Spain international match on 15 November 2014, a European Championship Qualifying match against Belarus.

Huelva (US: , Spanish: [ˈwelβa]) is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is between two short rias though has an outlying spur including nature reserve on the Gulf of Cádiz coast. The rias are of the Odiel and Tinto rivers and are good natural harbors. According to the 2010 census, the city had a population of 149,410. Huelva is home to Recreativo de Huelva, the oldest football club in Spain. While the existence of a pre-Phoenician settlement within the current urban limits since circa 1250 BC has been tentatively defended by scholars, Phoenicians established a stable colony roughly by the 9th century BC.

The naval Battle of Saltes Island or Battle of Saltes (Spanish: Batalla de la Isla Saltés) took place on 17 July 1381, off Saltes Island, between the Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal during the Third Ferdinand War. The Castilian fleet commanded by Don Fernando Sánchez de Tovar defeated decisively the Portuguese fleet led by João Afonso Telo. The result of the battle was the destruction of the naval offensive capability of Portugal, achieving the Castilian naval supremacy in the Atlantic Ocean.

The 2011 IAAF World Cross Country Championships took place on March 20, 2011. The races were held at the Polideportivo Antonio Gil Hernández in Punta Umbría, Spain. Reports of the event were given for the IAAF.

Estadio Colombino was a multi-use stadium in Huelva, Spain. It was initially used as the stadium for Recreativo de Huelva matches. It was replaced by Estadio Nuevo Colombino in 2001. The capacity of the stadium was 13,000 spectators.