Capital of the Priorat comarca (Tarragona). It began as a place of resettlement after the Christian conquest: in 1168 Albert de Castellvell ceded the site to Pere de Déu to fortify and settle it, and in 1191 it received its settlement charter.
aguardiente 19th century; phylloxera 1894; cooperative bodega 1919A castle for wine after phylloxera
Falset, a town resettled under a settlement charter in 1191 and capital of the old county of Prades, lived in the 19th century off wine and aguardiente, with four distilleries by the middle of the century. Phylloxera arrived in 1894 and sank both the economy and the population. The peasants responded by banding together in the Agricultural Syndicate of Falset, which in 1919 commissioned Cèsar Martinell to build a cooperative bodega. The architect conceived it as a castle, inspired by the town’s medieval past, with parabolic brick arches and insulated underground tanks, and ever since people have called it a cathedral of wine. The old 12th-century castle of the counts of Prades has in turn become the Castell del Vi, an interpretation centre for wine culture.
Alive today: Falset is home to the Regulatory Council of the DO Montsant (created in 2001-2002 from the former Falset subzone of the DO Tarragona). The Falset-Marçà Cooperative still makes wine in Martinell’s bodega, declared a BCIN in 2002. Every May the Fira del Vi de Falset is held (its 31st edition in 2026), and in December the Fira de Sant Andreu.