Chillán

The plains around Chillán were home to the Chiquillanes before the Spanish arrived, and the city's name is thought to come from chilla, a local word for the South American grey fox. Martín Ruiz de Gamboa founded San Bartolomé de Chillán on 26 June 1580 beside a fort on the northern bank of the Chillán river, as a stronghold in the wars against the Mapuche. In the great Mapuche uprising of 1655 the city was besieged and then abandoned; the Real Audiencia branded the flight cowardice and, as smallpox broke out among the refugees, forbade them to cross north of the Maule. Chillán was rebuilt nine years later.

Earthquakes have moved the city twice. The earthquake of 1751 destroyed it and shifted the course of the river, and many inhabitants moved to higher ground; after another destroyed it in 1835, Chillán was refounded on its present site on 5 November that year, leaving the old site as Chillán Viejo. It grew as a market town where goods from Patagonia and the Argentine pampas came over the mountain passes. Bernardo O'Higgins, Chile's founding father, was born in Chillán in 1778, and the countryside suffered badly in the independence wars and the banditry that followed.

On the night of 24 January 1939 an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 destroyed more than half the city, including the cathedral; with around 28,000 deaths across the region, it remains the deadliest in Chilean history. The government created CORFO, its development corporation, to rebuild and industrialise the country, and Chillán was rebuilt with modernist public buildings. On 6 September 2018 it became capital of the new Ñuble Region, separated from Biobío.

Chillán has produced an unusual number of artists. The pianist Claudio Arrau, born here in 1903 and counted among the great pianists of the 20th century, the tenor Ramón Vinay, the writer Marta Brunet and the sculptor Marta Colvin were all Chillanejos. The greatest artistic treasure came from abroad: after the 1939 earthquake Mexico donated a school, and through the efforts of Pablo Neruda the Mexican painters David Alfaro Siqueiros and Xavier Guerrero came to cover its walls with murals of the two countries' histories. The murals have since needed repeated restoration, carried out with Mexican help.

The market and the craft fair are cultural landmarks as much as places to shop. Since the 19th century they have been where the countryside comes to town, with baskets and wickerwork, woven ponchos and above all the black pottery of Quinchamalí, small glossy figures made by hand by the village's women potters and recognised as Living Human Treasures in 2014.

Football follows Ñublense, founded in 1916, at the municipal stadium. Religious life is mainly Catholic, with a large evangelical minority, and the September holidays and the August sausage festival are the biggest dates in the city's calendar.

About 185,000 people lived in the commune at the 2017 census, almost all of them in the city, which forms a single urban area with neighbouring Chillán Viejo. Chillán is the largest city in Ñuble, a region of about 480,000 people, and since 2018 has gained the offices of a regional capital.

The economy rests on the farms around it: Chillán is the market and service centre for a district of fruit, grain, vineyards and livestock, and the repair of farm and forestry machinery is one of its distinctive trades. More than 14,000 businesses were registered in 2021. Several universities, among them campuses of the Universidad de Concepción and the Universidad del Bío-Bío and the Adventist University of Chile, bring in students.

Winters are shaped by wood smoke: about 62 per cent of households heat with firewood, making the air the fourth most polluted in Chile. Summers can be extreme — the city recorded 41.6°C in February 2023 during the wildfires that hit the country. Since January 2024 the city's buses have taken only electronic payment, by card or QR code.

Chillán's name is attached to one food above all: its longaniza, a spiced pork sausage sold in the stalls of the municipal market and eaten grilled across the city. It received a denomination of origin in 2023, and every August the municipality holds a longaniza festival in the streets around the Plaza de Armas.

The market and the craft fair are also the place to try the country cooking of Ñuble. Summer brings pastel de choclo, a pie of sweet ground corn over a meat filling; humitas, sweetcorn paste steamed in corn husks; and porotos granados, fresh beans stewed with corn and squash, served with pebre, a tomato and chilli salsa. Tortilla de rescoldo, bread traditionally baked in the embers, belongs to the same country cooking, and mote con huesillo, a sweet cold drink of dried peaches with husked wheat, is the summer refreshment.

Ñuble's wine comes from the Itata valley, which grows País and Muscat grapes. Pipeño, a young, rustic wine traditionally made from País, is the everyday drink of the countryside, and a glass of it with grilled longaniza is as local a meal as the city offers.