Casares (Malaga)

Casares municipality
Basic data
Autonomous Community :	Andalusia
Province :	Málaga
Coordinates	36 ° 27 ′ N , 5 ° 16 ′ W Coordinates: 36 ° 27 ′ N , 5 ° 16 ′ W
Height :	435 msnm
Area :	160 km²
Residents :	6,515 (Jan 1, 2019)
Population density :	40.72 inhabitants / km²
Postal code :	29690
Municipality number ( INE ):	29041
administration
Mayor :	Antonia Morera ( Izquierda Unida )
Website :	www.casares.es
Location of the municipality

View of Casares

Casares is a village and a municipality in the province of Málaga ( Spain ).

Geographical location

Casares is on the border of the provinces of Málaga and Cádiz in the Sierra Bermeja (Serranía de Ronda ). The next larger towns are Manilva , Estepona and Gaucín .

Origin of name

The origin of the name is controversial: it probably goes back to the Arabic caxara (fortress). According to legend, however, the name goes back to Julius Caesar , who was a Roman praetor in 61 BC. He had a skin disease cured in the nearby sulfur baths of Hedionda .

history

Narrow alley in Casares

According to archaeological finds, the history of Casares goes back to around 1000 BC. BC when the area around today's Casares offered space for an Ibero-Phoenician population. After the conquest of Spain by the Romans in the 2nd century BC. About 4 km from today's Casares, they founded the city of Lacipo , which had its economic base in the production of olive oil. Even before the fall of the Roman Empire, Lacipo was becoming less and less important.

The actual development of Casares as an independent village, on the other hand, only began between 450 and 650. With the conquest of Andalusia by the Moors from 711, Casares came under Arab rule and was subject to tribute. In return, it became a largely autonomous “protection zone”. The Moorish rulers expanded Casares into a regionally important administrative center and provided it with a fortress, the Alcázar . In the “Pact of Casares”, the Castilian King Pedro I (Pedro the Cruel) and the Nasrid ruler Muhammad V formed an alliance that pursued the re-establishment of Muhammad as supreme ruler.

Until it was conquered by Christian troops during the Reconquista in 1484, Casares remained part of the Nasrid Taifa Granada . The expulsion of the Moors, now known as the Morisken, from Andalusia was less successful in the inaccessible Sierra of Andalusia than in the big cities, and remnants of the former Moorish population united in a rebellion against the Christian rulers in 1570. Especially in the Alpujarras and in the Serranía de Ronda this quickly became a serious threat. The bloody suppression of the rebellion by the Dukes of Arcos not only resulted in the expulsion of the last Moors, but also led to the general decline of the region.

In 1885 the future lawyer Gil Blas Infante was born. The "father of Andalusian nationalism" was murdered by nationalist troops on August 11, 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War . The Casareños commemorate the most famous son of their village with a statue in the Plaza de España.

Attractions

Lacipo
Iglesia Parroquial de La Encarnación
Ermita de Santa Cruz
Baños de la Hedionda

literature

Christopher Wawn, David Wood: In Search of Andalucía: A Historical Geographical Observation: The Málaga Seaboard. Durham, Edinburgh, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 1-85821-690-7 .

Individual evidence

↑ Cifras oficiales de población resultantes de la revisión del Padrón municipal a 1 de enero . Population statistics from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (population update).

Web links

Commons : Casares - collection of images, videos and audio files

[1] Cifras oficiales de población resultantes de la revisión del Padrón municipal a 1 de enero . Population statistics from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (population update).