Cañete

People have lived in this corner of the Cuenca highlands since the Upper Palaeolithic, when hunter-gatherers left rock paintings and engravings in the surrounding area. Celtiberian settlements followed, then small, scattered Roman ones. By the early Middle Ages the town was inhabited, and its walls, possibly with earlier Visigothic foundations, took their present form under Muslim rule around the time of the Caliphate of Córdoba's peak.

The town had likely already fallen to Christian forces before Alfonso VIII of Castile took Cuenca in 1177. Cañete was the birthplace of Álvaro de Luna, the powerful Castilian noble who served as Constable of Castile, Grand Master of Santiago, and chief favourite of King Juan II. He is buried in Toledo Cathedral.

The town saw conflict repeatedly: Comunero uprisings in 1520, guerrilla resistance against Napoleon's forces (with the legendary El Empecinado active in the area), and Carlist occupation from 1834 to 1837, during which General Ramón Cabrera used the castle as a base and added a bastion that altered much of the medieval structure. During the Civil War, militias destroyed the parish church's contents and both its bells, and the surrounding area was fortified against a Nationalist advance from the nearby Teruel front.