Linares

The land around Linares has been occupied since the Pleistocene, with Palaeolithic traces found in the river terraces of the Guadalimar. The oldest significant archaeological remains, however, belong to the Bronze Age, specifically its Argaric phase.

The story of the area is really the story of Cástulo, the ancient city that once stood here. It was a major Iberian settlement — known as Kastilo — and later a Roman one, serving as the capital of Oretania, a region stretching across much of what is now northeast Jaén province and parts of Ciudad Real and Albacete, bounded to the north by the Guadalquivir basin. From an early stage, Cástulo controlled the considerable mineral wealth of the surrounding hills.

That wealth made it a target. After losing the First Punic War, Carthage turned its attention to the Iberian Peninsula and its mines. Cástulo became a Carthaginian ally during the Second Punic War, a relationship sealed by marriage: the Cástulo-born Himilce wed the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca. While Hannibal campaigned in Italy, Himilce died in Cástulo along with their son Áspar, killed by plague.

The alliance with Carthage eventually broke down. The local aristocracy struck a deal with the Roman general Scipio Africanus, and Cástulo surrendered peacefully after witnessing what had happened to the neighbouring city of Iliturgi, which was sacked and destroyed for resisting. Cástulo was granted free and immune status, keeping its own institutions in exchange for accepting a Roman garrison. Romanisation followed, and the city eventually became a municipium under Latin law. It also became an early Christian bishopric, with its own diocese.

Rome organised the mines through the Societas Castulonensis, and the city prospered. But from the Imperial period onwards, declining mining returns, barbarian invasions, and a power vacuum brought gradual collapse. The Visigoths who followed effectively abandoned the mines, and Cástulo faded.

Linares is not a city of grand monuments, but it holds a varied architectural record that runs from Romanesque sobriety through to Modernist detail.

The main square, the Plaza del Ayuntamiento — historically known as "El Llano" — was once used for bullfighting. It is framed by two notable neoclassical buildings. The first is the town hall itself, a square-plan building with a central courtyard, built in the eighteenth century and reopened in 2021 after sixteen years of restoration work costing close to four million euros. Its clock tower plays a melody by the guitarist Andrés Segovia on the hour. Opposite stands the Casa de la Munición y la Moneda, a munitions and coinage factory built in the reign of Carlos III. Its neoclassical façade carries the royal coat of arms and a tiled mosaic of Santa Bárbara, patron saint of miners. During the Peninsular War it supplied the guerrilla resistance by smuggling ammunition out in bundles of firewood. It now houses the local tax office.

Nearby, the Pósito — a late eighteenth-century grain store — has been converted into a tourism office, city interpretation centre, documentation centre, exhibition space, and a museum dedicated to the Linares-born singer Raphael.

Tucked between the church of Santa María and a convent, a single circular corner tower with a projecting parapet is all that survives of the large six-towered fortress that once enclosed the settlement from which modern Linares grew. The rest was demolished in the nineteenth century. It is listed as a protected cultural asset.

The Palacio de los Zambrana, a Mannerist building from the first half of the sixteenth century, has served as a noble residence, industrial school, infantry barracks, and old people's home. Its plain rectangular façade is offset by a Castilian tower, one of only three such towers still standing in the city.

The market building and the Marqueses de Linares hospital, both designed by architect Francisco de Paula Casado and built between 1904 and 1917, represent Neo-Mudéjar and Neo-Gothic styles respectively.