The Cistercians who settled here followed their order's tradition of choosing remote, well-watered locations. The Valldigna delivered on both counts. Surrounded by hills covered in Mediterranean scrub and fed by reliable springs, the valley offered the isolation the monks sought and the agricultural potential their labor could exploit. By royal decree, the entire valley belonged to them. They farmed it, managed its water systems, and oversaw its inhabitants. The monastery grew into one of the most important Cistercian foundations in the Crown of Aragon, a spiritual powerhouse whose influence radiated far beyond its cloister walls.

For more than five hundred years, monks lived and prayed within these walls. Then came 1835 and the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizabal, a sweeping Spanish reform that dissolved religious orders and seized their properties. A revolt erupted in the Valldigna valley itself, and the monks were forced out. What followed was predictable and devastating: the monastery's goods, artwork, and furnishings were sold off, plundered, or destroyed. The buildings that had anchored the valley's identity for half a millennium were abandoned to weather, vegetation, and scavengers who carted away stone for other construction projects. Decades of neglect reduced the complex to a picturesque ruin.

The monastery's resurrection is as much political as architectural. When the Valencian Community adopted its modern Statute of Autonomy, Article 57 designated the monastery as "the spiritual, historical and cultural temple of the ancient Kingdom of Valencia" and "a symbol of the grandeur of the Valencian people." That is not typical language for a zoning regulation. The Generalitat Valenciana committed to recovering, restoring, and preserving the site, transforming it into a meeting point for all Valencians and a research center for regional history. The restoration work that began under this mandate has slowly returned shape and legibility to the monastery's bones -- its church, cloister, and chapter house emerging from centuries of collapse.

Simat de la Valldigna, the small town that grew up around the monastery, sits in the same green corridor that attracted the Cistercians seven centuries ago. Orange groves have replaced much of the original farmland, but the valley's character persists: quiet, enclosed, agricultural. The monastery itself now forms part of the Route of the Monasteries of Valencia, a cultural trail linking several historic religious sites across the province. Visitors walking through the restored spaces can still sense the Cistercian principle that guided the original design -- austerity as devotion, simplicity as beauty, labor as prayer. The valley the monks once owned now owns their memory.