Alburquerque

Human settlement around Alburquerque goes back to prehistory. The surrounding area has yielded funeral stelae, axes, arrowheads, anthropomorphic tombs, and dolmens, evidence of early peoples including, possibly, the Vettones. Later came Roman occupation, then Arab rule, and archaeological studies point to the town's foundations lying somewhere in that deep past.

Christian reconquest reached Alburquerque in 1166, when Fernando II took it from the Almohads and handed it to the Military Order of Santiago in 1171. The town then changed hands repeatedly between Moorish and Christian forces over the following decades, with Alfonso IX recapturing it in 1184. Its position so close to Portugal meant that war was a constant presence. Populations were repeatedly displaced as lands were razed, men conscripted, and battles lost. Yet communities rebuilt themselves each time peace returned.

The town's medieval fabric reflects this turbulent history. The castle was built by don Álvaro de Luna, Constable of Castile. The walled quarter known as Villa Adentro preserves lanes of small houses with pointed Gothic doorways, some bearing details that mark them as the homes of Jewish families before the expulsion of 1492.

During the reign of Felipe V, Anglo-Portuguese forces took the castle in 1705 and held it until 1716, when it returned to the Spanish crown.

Alburquerque also sent people to the Americas and the Philippines. According to Vicente Navarro del Castillo, 96 locals took part in those conquests. Among them were Juan Castaño, who helped found Venezuelan cities including El Tocuyo and La Borburata, and Captain Juan Ruiz de Arce, who fought in the conquest of Peru and wrote a chronicle of the capture of Inca Atahualpa and the march from Cajamarca to Cuzco. Fray Bernardo de Alburquerque travelled to Mexico as one of the first Dominican friars there, was recommended by Bartolomé de las Casas, became Bishop of Oaxaca, and was proposed for sainthood by his contemporaries after his death, though the honour was never granted.

By the mid-nineteenth century the town had grown to 1,542 households and 5,470 residents. Its population in 2016 stood at 5,436.

Alburquerque's oldest surviving mark on the landscape is the rock shelter of the Risco de San Blas, on the southern face of the sierra near the Cruz de San Blas. The shelter covers roughly three metres by two and contains schematic figures from the Bronze Age, one of the most significant collections of schematic rock art in the region. It was declared a National Monument in 1942.

Above the town rises the Castillo de Luna, a late medieval fortress built on a rocky crag of the Sierra de San Pedro by don Álvaro de Luna, Master of the Order of Santiago and Constable of Castile. It commands views over the town and the Los Baldíos district, and sits close to the Portuguese border, roughly halfway between Valencia de Alcántara to the north and Badajoz to the south. The castle was declared a national monument in 1924 and a Site of Cultural Interest in 1933. It is considered one of the most significant medieval fortresses on La Raya, the Spanish-Portuguese border zone.

The walled inner quarter, Villa Adentro, is a declared historic-artistic ensemble. Its main street runs east to west from the Puerta de Villa to the Puerta de Valencia. Houses are small and single-storey, built in rubble stone or granite with whitewashed fronts. The town walls themselves average ten metres in height and include several defensive towers: the Torre del Reloj, the Torre Cabera, and the Torre Mocha. The Puerta de Villa, the main gateway into the walled area, stands opposite the church of San Mateo and incorporates a projecting square tower with the coat of arms of Alonso Sánchez on the outer arch. The Puerta de Valencia is flanked by two cylindrical towers thirteen metres tall and has two gates, one rounded and one pointed. Anthropomorphic tombs can be found along one side of the church of Santa María del Mercado.

Inside the walls, the church of Santa María del Mercado was built between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with later Baroque additions, and houses the Cristo del Amparo, a sculpture of considerable artistic value. The church of San Mateo mixes Gothic and Spanish Renaissance styles from the same period. The church of San Francisco, begun in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, was part of a former Franciscan convent and contains a major altarpiece in the Baroque churrigueresque style. Santa María del Castillo is a late Romanesque basilica with three naves separated by rounded arches and vaulted ceilings.

Twelve kilometres east of the town, the privately owned Castillo de Azagala is a rectangular, three-enclosure fortress of rubble and ashlar masonry, notable for its square granite Arms Tower and its Tower of Smoke, with a chapel at ground level. It is currently being converted into a luxury hotel.