Jerez de los Caballeros

People have lived in and around Jerez de los Caballeros since prehistoric times, dolmens survive at Toriñuelo and elsewhere in the surrounding dehesa. The Phoenicians knew the area and may have founded it, giving it the name Ceret. Under Roman rule it was called Fama Iulia Seria, sitting close to the Via de la Plata between Itálica and Mérida; mosaics, funerary stones, bridges, and inscriptions referencing prominent Roman families have all been found here.

A Visigothic column inscription in the church of Santa María records its consecration on 25 December 556. During the Arab period the town was known as Xerixa or Xeris, and its legacy survives in neighbourhood names like the Morería and the Alhóndiga. Alfonso IX of León took it in 1230 with Templar help, and the Crown later granted the town to the Knights Templar.

When Pope Clement V dissolved the Order in 1312, local tradition holds that the Templar knights resisted and were killed, the name Torre Sangrienta, the Bloody Tower, on the town walls recalls this. Jerez then passed to the Crown, later to the Order of Santiago, and by the Renaissance it was a town of enough weight to send 172 people to participate in the great enterprises of that era.

Jerez was declared a historic-artistic ensemble in 1966. Its architecture spans mudéjar, Gothic, and baroque styles, and it is widely known as the city of the four towers, a cluster of baroque towers built from brick, plaster, and glazed clay. The oldest church in town is Santa María de la Encarnación, whose square tower is topped by a slender spire.