from developing the area. City of the Environment In 2010 work began on a "City of the Environment" on an ecologically important site near the river Duero. The project ran into economic problems relating to the Spanish property bubble and also legal problems. It was recast as a business park, the Parque Empresarial del Medio Ambiente (PEMA). Industrial estate The most damaging proposal from a visual point of view is the plan to develop a new industrial zone (Polígono Industrial de Soria II). This industrial estate has been planned for El Cabezo, which is adjacent to Numantia and the Roman encampment (and would also affect part of the Romanesque site of Los Arcos de San Juan de Duero). There has been a legal appeal by the aristocratic Marichalar family against the expropriation of its land for this development. Symbolism The Siege of Numantia was recorded by several Roman historians who admired the sense of freedom of the ancient Iberians and acknowledged their fighting skills against the Roman legions. In Spanish culture, it has a meaning similar to that of Masada for Israelis. Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quijote) wrote a play about the siege, El cerco de Numancia, which stands today as his best-known dramatic work. Antonio Machado references the city in his poetry book Campos de Castilla. The poem is an ode to the countryside and peoples of rural Castile. More recently, Carlos Fuentes wrote a short story about the event, "The Two Numantias", in his collection The Orange Tree. Several Spanish Navy ships have been named Numancia and a Sorian battalion was named batallón de numantinos. During the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalist Numancia regiment took the town of Azaña in Toledo. To erase the memory of the Republican president Manuel Azaña, they renamed it Numancia de la Sagra. The Sorian football team is called CD Numancia. The expression "numantine resistance" is occasionally used to refer to particularly obdurate resistance. References Bibliography Rafael Trevino "Rome's Enemies 4: Spanish Armies 218 BC – 19 BC", Osprey Military, Man-at-arms Series 180, 1992, External links James Grout: 'Numantia,' part of the Encyclopædia Romana Photo of a reconstructed Celtiberian house at Numantia Information about the current threat to Numantia accessed September 2008 Nuevo Cerco a Numancia * Olga Latorre: Nuane Numantia: Archaeology and History, multimedia book edited by José María Luzón and María del Carmen Alonso. Texts by Alfredo Jimeno Martínez.