Vélez-Blanco

The town's origins lie in a Muslim settlement built around a fortified alcazaba, probably in the medieval period. That original core, the Morería, still defines the oldest part of town: houses stepping up the hillside with the castle as their constant reference point. The settlement was encircled by two lines of walls. The inner wall enclosed the alcazaba and the mosque, which later became the church of La Magdalena. The Morería occupied the space between the two wall lines. The outer wall ran from the Fuente de los Cinco Caños down to the Plazoleta del Mesón, skirting the streets of Palacio and Calasparra, with a small gate opening onto the market gardens. Another gate stood at the Caños de Caravaca. Beyond the walls lay the outlying suburbs.

Politically, the town was part of the Crown of Aragon from January 1436 until 1446, when it was taken by the forces of Juan II. During the Reconquista, Vélez-Blanco and its neighbour Vélez-Rubio surrendered without a fight in June 1488, with their fortresses occupied by Christian forces on the 18th of that month, following the capitulations of Vera.

Construction of the Fajardo castle began in 1507, requiring the demolition of part of the Arab alcazaba. As the town grew beyond the Morería, new streets and houses were built for the incoming Christian population, including the main thoroughfare of La Corredera. Over the following century, the town spread down the hillside and onto flatter ground, with the church of Santiago becoming the social and commercial heart of the community.

A further significant addition came with the Convento de San Luis Obispo, commissioned by Luis Fajardo and built between 1601 and 1615 on the far side of the Barranco de las Fuentes. The Franciscan order occupied it until 1835, and later the Franciscanas Concepcionistas were based there from 1916 to 1996. The convent drew a new neighbourhood to form around it, organised along the Calle San Francisco, with simple one- and two-storey whitewashed houses following the lie of the land. The town's historic core took its current shape through the population growth of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today it is framed by the road between Vélez-Rubio and María, the hill of the castle, the hill of Las Fuentes to the west, steep slopes to the north and south, and the ravines of La Canastera and Las Fuentes to the east.

The territory of Vélez-Blanco holds a remarkable concentration of prehistoric rock art. In December 1998, the Mediterranean rock art of the Iberian Peninsula was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list during the organisation's 22nd session, covering more than 700 sites with rock paintings across Andalucía, Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha, Cataluña, Murcia, and Valencia. A local figure, Julián Martínez García, former director general of Cultural Heritage for both the Junta de Andalucía and the Spanish Ministry of Culture, played a notable role in that inscription process, and a working meeting connected to it was held in Vélez-Blanco itself in 1996.

The sites within the municipality that carry World Heritage status include: the Abrigo de Las Tejeras, Abrigo de Las Colmenas, Abrigos del Estrecho de Santonge, Abrigo del Gabar, Abrigos de Los Lavaderos de Tello, and the extensive Abrigos del Maimón group, Yedra, Los Letreros, Letreros Inferior, Molinos I, Molinos II, Panal, Hoyos I, Hoyos II, and Las Covachas, as well as rock shelters in the Sierra de María shared with the neighbouring municipality of María. Among these sites, the Cueva de Ambrosio stands apart as a major archaeological monument in its own right. It sits in the northern part of the municipality at 1,083 metres above sea level, beside the Arroyo del Moral.

The cave is a large rock shelter 40 metres wide, with height and depth each reaching 20 metres, its middle section divided by a massive block that fell from the cliff above around 1902. Excavations began here in 1911 under Federico de Motos and the abbé Henri Breuil. Further campaigns followed in 1944 and from 1958 to 1964, when work led by Eduardo Ripoll Perelló revealed occupation layers running from the Middle Solutrean period through to the Neolithic.

Systematic research resumed in 1981 under Sergio Ripoll López and has continued since. Three Solutrean levels have been identified, dating from roughly 23,000 to 16,000 years before the present. The cave has yielded exceptional quantities of Solutrean tools, tanged and barbed points, notched arrowheads, and the leaf-shaped lance points, making it one of the most significant Solutrean sites known.

Analysis of the evidence suggests the shelter was occupied continuously over several decades, most likely between June and December each year.