Baena

People have lived around Baena since prehistoric times. The most significant early evidence comes from the Metal Ages, and later from the Iberians, whose religious and funerary remains at the site of Torreparedones include the Leona de Baena, a stone lion sculpture now held in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. That site, on the hill of Minguillar, is thought to have been the Iberian city of Iponoba, mentioned by Pliny the Elder.

Whether the Romans called the settlement Julia Regia or Virtus Iulia, supposedly in recognition of help given to Julius Caesar at the Battle of Munda, has never been conclusively established. The town's current position on the hillside is likely a legacy of Muslim rule. Under Islamic governance, Baena was reorganised as a fortified settlement, given a walled upper quarter called the Almedina, and equipped with a castle and a mosque.

During the ninth century it was seized by the Muladi rebel Umar ben Hafsun, and in the following century the fortress served as the residence of the governors of the Cora of Cabra. Fernando III took Baena peacefully in 1240 and handed it to his brother, the Infante Alfonso de Molina. The lordship eventually passed to the Fernández de Córdoba family in the fifteenth century, and it was during this period that most of the church of Santa María la Mayor was built, along with the convent of Madre de Dios.

Later centuries brought demographic growth followed by deep agricultural crisis. Land was dominated by large estates and a landless peasantry. The abolition of feudal lordships raised hopes of redistribution, but the land sales of the early nineteenth century largely benefited the already wealthy, in 1821 alone, more than 8,000 fanegas from the Monte Horquera were privatised and quickly consolidated into the hands of the richest buyers.

A cholera epidemic in 1854 killed around 700 people and drove significant emigration. Baena was granted city status by royal decree in 1913, and in 1918 a railway branch line linked it to the wider Spanish rail network.

Baena's old upper quarter, the Almedina, still has its medieval walls and the castle that was built within them, both dating back to Moorish times and developed further through the medieval period. A second fortified site, the Castillo de Torreparedones, sits within a broader archaeological complex shared with the neighbouring municipality of Castro del Río, preserving Iberian and Roman remains including a sanctuary. The town has a high concentration of churches.

The most prominent is Santa María la Mayor, a parish church restored in 2003 whose origins may include part of the original mosque. Others include the churches of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (formerly a Dominican convent), San Bartolomé Apóstol (restored in 2009), San Francisco (a former Franciscan convent), and several smaller churches now repurposed as community centres. The Convento de Madre de Dios, built by the Fernández de Córdoba family in the fifteenth century, also survives.

Several historic civic buildings are worth noting: the Casa Consistorial houses the town hall; the Casa de la Condesa is now the Semana Santa museum; and the Casa de la Tercia, a building originally tied to the collection of church tithes, now holds the Museo Histórico y Arqueológico. The town also has a virtual museum with an extensive collection of editions of Don Quixote and other works by Cervantes. Public squares around Baena carry a number of sculptures, several by the artist Francisco Ariza Arcas, including works dedicated to the town's drum and bass drum players, to olive growers, and a reproduction of the Leona de Baena.

Outside town, the Cueva del Yeso is the only water-formed cave in the Guadalquivir Valley in Córdoba province. It shelters a large colony of an endangered bat species and shrimp found nowhere else in the world.