Gata

Gata stands on ground that was already inhabited in Roman times, when a settlement called Catobriga sat beside the Via Dalmacia, the road linking the cities now known as Coria and Ciudad Rodrigo. That Roman foundation gives the town a long pedigree, but its modern identity was forged in the medieval period.

In 1212, Alfonso IX of León drove out the Moorish occupiers after five centuries of Muslim rule. The Moors had called the place Albaranes, and the watchtower they left behind — the Almenara — was taken in the same campaign. In 1253, Alfonso X the Wise gave the town to the Bishop of Coria, who named it Hispania. Just four years later, in 1257, the bishop passed it on to the Order of Alcántara, which made Gata a dependent settlement of the commandery of Santibáñez el Alto. The authorities there treated the local population harshly enough to cause serious depopulation. To stop the exodus, the Master of the Order granted Gata the status of an exempt town in 1341, a privilege later confirmed by Enrique II of Castile at the Cortes of Burgos in 1367.

The Order's connection to Gata ran deep. In 1410 the town's church hosted the Order's general chapter, with Sancho de Aragón presiding as Master. Later, the last Master, Juan de Zúñiga y Pimentel, established an academic institution in Gata — the Academia del Maestre — directed by the humanist Antonio de Nebrija.

Gata also had a significant Jewish community during this period. When the 1492 expulsion came, most of its Jewish residents crossed into neighbouring Portugal. By the 1842 census the town had grown to 570 households and over 3,000 inhabitants. The hamlet of Moheda de Gata was founded as a separate district in 1954.

In 1995, Gata was designated a Site of Cultural Interest as a Historic Ensemble, formalised by a regional decree and published in the Extremadura Official Gazette that April.

The most striking single monument is the Almenara tower, sitting on a steep, rocky hill roughly half a league from the town centre. Its name means "fortress" in Arabic, which accurately describes its purpose. The tower is pentagonal, built from stone and lime with ashlar blocks at each of its five corners. Today it is largely in ruins, though the keep — the torre del homenaje — still stands. Within the enclosure, the original stables and two rooms above them once occupied the space beside the walls. Part of a round bastion in front of the entrance also survives. Access to the tower was originally by a removable ladder, functioning like a drawbridge to keep it defensible. The views from the top repay the climb.

The town's domestic architecture is equally distinctive. Houses typically rise two or three storeys: cellars and stables at ground level, living rooms and bedrooms on the middle floor, and the kitchen — traditionally without a chimney — at the top alongside storage space. Granite is the dominant building material, supplemented with dark-earth mortar and river sand; the bedrock beneath the town is also granitic and was quarried directly for construction. Some buildings combine a granite lower section with wooden-frame and adobe construction higher up.

Street surfaces have historically been laid with small granite pieces and rounded river stones. The local authority has been working to restore this paving while adapting it slightly, keeping cobbles in the centre and using more uniform granite slabs for the pavements. Façades are predominantly ochre, though the Plaza de la Constitución has seen an increasing spread of white paint on upper floors, which somewhat dilutes the traditional appearance.

Doorways are typically rectangular, framed by granite jambs and large lintels. Windows follow the same pattern, mostly rectangular, occasionally square. Several buildings still carry late-Gothic conopial arches and small carved sill details. The Plaza de la Constitución holds the town hall, which has a portico of five semicircular arches between square granite pilasters. On Calle Campito there is a small palace with granite-framed openings and two conopial-arched windows. The Plaza de las Órdenes contains another palace that was probably once the seat of the Order of Alcántara's local commandery.