Montánchez

Human settlement around Montánchez goes back further than written records. Scattered populations were already living near reliable water sources during the Bronze Age, and earlier traces, from the Chalcolithic period through the early and middle Bronze Age, have been found in the surrounding area, though they are sparse. By the late Bronze Age the population had grown, and Roman settlers later left their mark in funerary inscriptions and votive altars found nearby.

The Visigoths held the town from around the mid-first millennium until 713, when it fell to Muslim forces and was absorbed into the province of Mérida. Control passed back and forth over the following centuries. The town appears in historical records as early as 1095, listed among the fortresses of the Aftasid Kingdom of Badajoz.

In 1166 the Portuguese knight Gerardo Sempavor briefly took it, only to lose it the following year to Ferdinand II of León. The Almohads later rebuilt and expanded the fortress, reinforcing it as a strategic point on contested routes. By 1196 it was back in Arab hands under Al Mansur.

The decisive Christian reconquest came in 1230, when Alfonso IX of León defeated Aben-Hud at the Battle of Alange. The Arab garrison at Montánchez, isolated after the fall of Mérida, surrendered without a fight. Alfonso granted the castle and town to the Order of Santiago and its Master, Pedro González Mengo, with obligations to make war, peace, and truces in the king's name.

His son Fernando III confirmed the grant in 1234. González Mengo gave the town its charter around 1236, reserving two-thirds of the territory for the local council, unsellable to non-residents, and one third for the Order. From Montánchez the Order launched further conquests across Extremadura, taking the castles of Alange, Hornachos, Reina, and Montemolín.

His successor won Medellín in 1238. Montánchez became the Order of Santiago's sole major stronghold in upper Extremadura, and the Order founded one of its earliest convents for knights' wives here, on the road down to Robledo. The castle remained a flashpoint: in 1429 the Aragonese Infantes used it as a base for rebellion against the Castilian Crown.

The parish church of San Mateo stands at the centre of Montánchez's religious life. Beyond it, the town has an unusually dense concentration of small shrines and chapels: the hermitages of Nuestra Señora de la Consolación, El Pilar, Los Remedios, San Antonio (also known as the Virgen de la Soledad), San Blas, Santo Domingo, and the Virgen de Fátima. Marking the approaches and open spaces of the town are the Cruces del Calvario, the Cruz del Prado, the Cruz del Llano, and the Cruz de San Blas, also called the Cruz de los Mártires.