Écija

The area around Écija has been occupied since the Middle Palaeolithic, when hunter-gatherer communities settled on the high terraces of the Genil river. Over time, populations shifted to the lower terraces and began moving toward a more settled way of life. Open-air villages appeared, simple, without formal town planning, a result of the non-karstic geology of the area.

Early inhabitants here developed a distinctive pottery tradition: a burnished, deep-red ceramic known as almagra ware, its colour produced by iron oxide and oxidising firing. The dead were buried collectively in artificial underground chambers shaped like hemispheres, with entrance corridors facing southeast, cut into the clay. Numerous pit silos of this type have been found across the Écija area, though whether they served as collective burials, grain stores, or both remains unresolved.

Écija has an early claim in Spanish prehistory: one of the first Bell Beaker vessels found in Spain came from here, unearthed in 1888 and now held in the Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla. Palmela-type arrowheads, also associated with Bell Beaker culture, have turned up here too. These finds point toward cultural connections with the Portuguese Tagus estuary region, via Extremadura and Sierra Morena.

Bronze Age settlement concentrated around what is now known as the Plaza de Armas archaeological site and the Cerro del Alcázar, beside the Genil. Houses were oval or circular, spread across an informal settlement in an area well suited to agriculture. By the late Bronze Age, cremation had replaced collective burial as the dominant funerary rite.

In the early modern period, Écija was deeply shaped by religious institutions. Between 1558 and 1730, 114 people connected to the town were sentenced by the Córdoba Inquisition tribunal. By a later century, Écija ranked second in the Kingdom of Seville for the number of convents, housing communities from at least a dozen different orders, among them Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites, Mercedarians, Jesuits, and Conceptionist Franciscans.

Écija is known above all for its baroque churches, convents, palaces, and manor houses. Roman architectural remains are visible across the city, and the layers of history run deep, in at least one case, a neoclassical church sits directly above an earlier mosque. The church of Santa Bárbara, on the Plaza de España, holds a particular distinction: it is considered the first neoclassical building constructed in Andalucía.

Beneath it lies an older Muslim place of worship. On the same Plaza de España stands a former Franciscan convent, originally dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua. Its courtyard contains two exterior altarpieces and a chapel that once belonged to the Brotherhood of the Vera Cruz.

A left-hand balcony at the main entrance was historically reserved for the Inquisition. Today the building is run by its own rector and is not a parish church. The church of the Descalzos, part of a former Discalced Carmelite convent on Calle del Conde, was founded in 1591 through the patronage of alderman Sancho de Rueda and his wife María de Cárdenas.

The church itself opened in 1614. After a fifteen-year restoration, it reopened for worship in mid-2010. It is widely regarded as the most baroque church in Écija, the town's architectural showpiece.

The church of Nuestra Señora del Valle, on the plaza of the same name, has roots going back to the Visigothic period, though the present building is neoclassical. It houses the image of Écija's patron, the Virgen del Valle. The Real Monasterio de Santa Inés del Valle, now home to Franciscan Clarisse nuns, was founded at the end of one century with a baroque church built at the start of the next.

Its tower is a striking example of the distinctive corner bell towers Écija is known for, brick-built, with trilobed arches for the bells, Corinthian pilaster capitals, ceramic pinnacles, and elaborate tilework covering its surfaces. Inside, the single-nave church retains a Mudéjar wooden ceiling of considerable interest, with an octagonal section over the presbytery resting on four pendentives with lacework decoration. Two convents closed in recent years after long histories: the Convento de las Marroquíes (formally the Convento de la Santísima Trinidad y Purísima Concepción), run by Conceptionist Franciscans, closed in October 2014; and another convent closed in Lent 2015 after four unbroken centuries of activity in Écija.