Burguillos del Cerro

Burguillos del Cerro grew from a cluster of small settlements gathered around rural chapels — San Coronado, San Vicente, San Lázaro and others. It sat within the territory of the Taifa of Badajoz before the Knights Templar took control of the area in 1229. Throughout the Reconquista the town fell under Templar authority and was administered as part of the Bailiwick of Jerez de los Caballeros.

When the Templar Order was dissolved, Burguillos became a seigneury and changed hands repeatedly — passing through the control of the Kingdom of Portugal and the King of Castile among others — until 1393, when it was acquired by Diego López de Zúñiga, Lord and Duke of the House of Béjar. The town remained within that domain for centuries. Its peak came under Teresa de Zúñiga y Guzmán, during whose time the town reached its greatest period of prosperity.

The repeated wars between Spain and Portugal brought the town considerable destruction across the following centuries. With the fall of the Ancien Régime, Burguillos was constituted as a municipal council within Extremadura, and from 1834 it was incorporated into the judicial district of Fregenal de la Sierra. By the 1842 census it counted 850 households and 3,080 residents. Until 1916 the town was known simply as Burguillos; that year it took its current name, Burguillos del Cerro.

The railway reached the area in 1936 with the opening of the Zafra–Jerez de los Caballeros line, and the town gained its own station. There were plans to extend the line to Villanueva del Fresno and eventually connect with the Portuguese rail network, but this never happened. Today the line carries only freight traffic.

The castle of Burguillos del Cerro is the most prominent landmark, sitting above the town and visible from a distance. Within the town itself, several churches span different periods and locations. The former parish church of San Juan Bautista and the church of Santa María de la Encina — now combined as a single parish of Santa María de la Encina y San Juan Bautista — are among the main religious buildings. There is also a former Franciscan convent, the Ex-convento de las Llagas de San Francisco.

The church of La Misericordia stands on a square that retains an old stone trough at its centre and once formed part of the Jewish quarter. The Cristo church sits in the most central part of town, at the end of the main promenade. What was once a convent of nuns now houses the town hall, though its church survives. Two further churches — del Amparo and del Perpetuo Socorro — each occupy their own squares.

A striking local custom marks the five road exits from the town: every hundred years on 3 May, a stone cross is placed at each departure point. Crosses stand on Calle San Juan, Calle Zafra, the Zafra road, Plaza del Amparo, Plaza del Perpetuo Socorro, and the Valverde road.

The Paseo de la Fuente Llana follows the line of an underground spring below it. Just outside town, a medieval bridge sits on a short detour off the Via de la Plata and the Cañada Real. Several old stone water troughs and fountains are distributed around the town and its outskirts — among them the Pilar del Oro (also called La Fuente Nueva), the Pilar de Arriba, the Pilar del Pocito de Abajo, and the Pilar Grande in the Plaza de la Misericordia. The Casa del Corregidor, once both a prison and the seat of local authority, also survives. On the edge of the municipal area stands the Dolmen de las Cañaveras, also known as the Dolmen de Azamel.