More history on Antequera

In the last third of the 1st millennium BC, the Iberian peninsula became part of the Roman Empire. The people quickly adopted Roman culture and the Latin language, and the transition to Roman rule was largely peaceful. As in many other places in Andalusia, the current city plan and the name originate from when Spain was part of the Roman Empire; the Latin name of the city was Antikaria. Under the Romans, the city continued to be an important commercial centre, especially known for the quality of its olive oil. The excavated Roman baths can be seen in the southeast part of the city. The Romans were later supplanted by a succession of invading tribes, leading eventually to domination by the Visigoths.
 

In the year 711 a tribe of Berbers out of North Africa (Moors) invaded Spain. By about 716, Antikaria was influenced by Moorish culture, tradition and architecture, and received a new name: Medina Antaquira. The Moorish state was known for its religious tolerance, and lasted until 1212, when a coalition of Christian kings drove them from Central Spain in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Over the next few years the dominant Almohad dynasty was defeated and Moorish Al-Andalus greatly reduced in strength. Medina Antaquira, which at that time had a population of about 2,600, became one of the northern cities of the remaining Nasrid kingdom of Granada and an important border town. To defend against the Catholic Spanish troops from the northern kingdoms, fortifications were built, and a castle was erected overlooking the city: the Alcazaba. Today only a few parts of the walls and some towers can be seen, including a tower called Torre del Homenaje.

For about two hundred years, Medina Antaquira was repeatedly attacked by Christian kings during the Reconquista, and on September 16, 1410 an army led by Ferdinand I of Aragon conquered the city. This gave Ferdinand, who was crowned King of Aragon in 1412, the title "Ferdinand of Antequera" (Don Fernando de Antequera), and the main street still carries his name: Calle Infante Don Fernando.
 

After Antequera became part of the Kingdom of Castile, the Muslims were driven out. The city became a Catholic fortress against the Muslim Nasrid kingdom of Granada, and a base for continuing conquest. After Granada, the last Moorish city, fell in 1492, Antequera began to recover from the centuries of fighting, and the population increased from 2,000 to almost 15,000 in twenty years.

Antequera became an important commercial town at the crossroads between Málaga to the south, Granada to the east, Córdoba to the north and Seville to the west. Because of its location, its flourishing agriculture, and the work of its craftsmen, all contributing to the cultural growth of the city, Antequera was called the "Heart of Andalusia" by the early 16th century. During this time the townscape also changed. Mosques and houses were torn down, and new churches and houses built in their place. The oldest church in Antequera, the late Gothic Iglesia San Francisco, was built around the year 1500.

In 1504, the humanist university "Real Colegiata de Santa María la Mayor" was founded, and it became a meeting place for important writers and scholars of the Spanish Renaissance. A school of poets arose during the 16th century that included Pedro Espinosa, Luis Martín de la Plaza, and Cristobalina Fernández de Alarcón. A school of sculpture produced artists who were mainly employed on the many churches built, and who were in demand in Seville, Málaga and Córdoba and the surrounding areas. The newly-built churches included San Sebastián in the city center and the largest and most splendid of the city, Real Colegiata de Santa María, with its richly decorated mannerist façade.

Still more churches and convents were built into the 18th century (today there are over 30 in the city altogether), as were palaces for the members of the aristocracy and the wealthier citizens in the Spanish Baroque style.

Antequera's prosperity slowly came to a close at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th. Spain had to accept the loss of its American colonies and lost a number of crucial military conflicts in Europe. That led to a deep economic crisis, which in some parts of the country led people to turn to bartering. Church, aristocracy and the upper middle class — the great landowners — who had been the clients and sponsors of the creative arts, lost most of their fortunes and could not afford to build more churches or palaces.

Starting from the mid-18th century, Spain underwent a series of reforms, in particular a land reform and the reduction of the power of the Church, that produced a slow economic recovery. The 19th century was tragic for Antequera. Its population was decimated by the Napoleonic invasion and the yellow fever of 1804, and it was not until 1830 that a prosperous middle class emerged as a result of the growing textile industry. This sector was to suffer once more in the beginning of the 20th century.

It was only in the 1960s, when the nearby Costa del Sol developed into an international tourist hotspot, that Antequera experienced another economic upswing. Today the city is an important tourist and cultural centre, not only on a regional scale. Antequera is now a modern town that is ideally placed to receive tourists, in which history still lives on in its numerous monuments and historical buildings.
 

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