Bages

Santpedor (Catalan pronunciation: [ˌsampəˈðo]) is a municipality and town in the comarca of Bages, central Catalonia. It is located north of Manresa, the flattest sector of Bages. Sights include the Romanesque-Gothic church of St. Peter, and the Hermitage of St. Francis. Notable natives of Santpedor include Sandra Sangiao, the voice of the Barcelona Gipsy Klezmer Orchestra (BGKO) and Pep Guardiola, former Barcelona football player and current manager of Manchester City.

Comarques Centrals is one of the seven territories defined by the Regional Plan of Catalonia. It is located in the central part of Catalonia and will be formed by five comarques: Anoia, Bages, Berguedà, Osona, Solsonès and Moianès. The most important city is Manresa.

Navarcles is a municipality in the province of Barcelona and autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain. The municipality covers an area of 3.53 square kilometres (1.36 sq mi) and the population in 2014 was 6,003.

The Monastery of Sant Benet de Bages is a former Benedictine monastery, in the comarca of Bages, Catalonia, Spain. The Romanesque monastery was thoroughly restored at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Catalan architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch.

Manresa (Catalan pronunciation: [mənˈrɛzə]) is the capital of the Comarca of Bages, located in the geographical centre of Catalonia, Spain, and crossed by the river Cardener. It is an industrial area with textile, metallurgical, and glass industries. The houses of Manresa are arranged around the basilica of Santa Maria de la Seu. Saint Ignatius of Loyola stopped to pray in the town on his way back from Montserrat in 1522. He also read in solitude in a cave near the town for a year, which contributed to the formulation of his Spiritual Exercises. As such, the town is a place of pilgrimage for Catholics. It is believed the comarcal name "Bages" comes from a corruption of the Latin "Bacchus" due to the extensive production of wine in the area. The wine was produced from grapes grown mainly in terraced vineyards, and many of these old terraces can be seen today. Wine ceased to be the main product of the area as a consequence of phylloxera, but is still a very important part of the Manresa/Bages economy. During the Napoleonic invasion, the volunteer troops of Manresa (sometent in Catalan language) defeated the French troops in the Bruch Pass (June 1808), but the retreating French burned and demolished much of the town. After the expulsion of Napoleon's troops, Manresans rebuilt the town using the rubble.

The Battle of Manresa and Battle of Vilafranca from 21 March to 5 April 1810 saw a Spanish division led by Juan Caro and Luis González Torres de Navarra, Marquess of Campoverde attack an Imperial French brigade commanded by François Xavier de Schwarz.

The County of Manresa (Catalan: Comtat de Manresa, Spanish: Condado de Manresa) is the western extremity of the County of Osona, divided into the Moianès and Bages. Through the Reconquista, Manresa was extended as far as Anoia, Segarra, and Urgell. The castle at Manresa dates from the last quarter of the ninth century. In that period, the region, depopulated since the rebellion of Aissó in the 826, was repopulated by settlers from the overpopulated regions of Pallars and Cerdanya. The repopulated regions came under the control of Wilfred the Hairy, who gave them their ecclesiastical and political organisation. The Valle de Lord was attached to the County of Urgell and the pagus of Berga (Berguedà) to the County of Cerdanya, but the region of the Ripollès, the Lluçanès, the Plana de Vic, and the Guilleries were structured around the city of Ausa, a region which in ancient times had been ethnically distinct, inhabited by the Ausetani. The County of Ausona was thus born and to it Wilfred attached the Moianés and Bages, which already had their own traditional capital, Manresa, which had historically been the region of the Lacetani. From the year 906, it is clear from documents that Manresa never possessed any judicial or administrative significance — it never had a viscount — rather it was a geographical unit solely. The centre of Manresa was the pagus of the same name. The most notable difference between Manresa and the rest of Ausona was due to privileges granted by King Odo in 889 and 890 whereby he gave Manresa the right, because of its position on the front line against Moorish aggression, to build towers of defence called manresanas or manresanes. Manresa fell into disuse as a term in the twelfth century, when the county was divided into veguerias.

Pla de Bages is a Spanish Denominación de Origen Protegida (DOP) (Denominació d'Origen Protegida in Catalan) for Catalan wines, located in the province of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain), and is one of the smallest DOPs in Spain, covering less than 500 hectares. It is also one of the newest having acquired its official status in 1997.

The Museu Comarcal de Manresa (Manresa Regional Museum) is a pluridisciplinary museum created on 2 September 1896 in Manresa and currently located in the old elementary school of Sant Ignasi (Saint Ignatius). It is part of the Barcelona Provincial Council Local Museum Network.

The Cave of Saint Ignatius is a sanctuary declared as a Local Cultural Heritage that includes a baroque church and a neoclassical building in Manresa (Catalonia), which was created to honor the place where, according to tradition, Saint Ignatius of Loyola shut himself in a cave to pray and do penance during his sojourn in the city from March 1522 to February 1523, where he wrote the Spiritual Exercises returning from his pilgrimage to Montserrat.

The Collegiate Basilica of Santa Maria (Catalan: Santa Maria de Manresa; Spanish: Santa María de Manresa), also known as La Seu, is a Romanesque-Gothic church in Manresa, Catalonia, north of Spain.

Sant Joan de Vilatorrada is a municipality in the comarca of the Bages in Catalonia, Spain. It is about 50 kilometres (31 mi) away from Barcelona. The town of Sant Joan de Vilatorrada is located at 3 km. from Manresa, the capital of the Bages comarca (county). The municipal limits are: in the North Sant Mateu de Bages and Callús, in the Northeast Santpedor; in the East Sant Fruitós de Bages, in the South-east Manresa and in the West Fonollosa.