Totana

In Roman times the area was known as Mave and served as the capital of a territory called Mavitania. Historians including Aureliano Fernández-Guerra and Eduardo Pérez Pujol connect this name to the later monastery of Tutanesio, from which Totana eventually took its own name. According to scholar García Antón, the town may also correspond to the ancient settlement of Blntla, possibly one of the cities included in the Pact of Teodomiro in 713, by which local inhabitants were guaranteed their lives, families, freedom of religion, and protection under the new Muslim authority.

The site of Las Cabezuelas, on the edge of town, shows continuous occupation from the Bronze Age through the Andalusian period. It may be the Towtana mentioned by Arab chroniclers, the place where Abd al-Rahman I stayed after taking it in 779 and redistributing its lands. The site was abandoned following events connected to the siege of Aledo in 1089.

In 1243, following the Treaty of Alcaraz, the Infante Alfonso of Castile incorporated the territory into the Castilian Crown. The town as it stands today grew gradually from a suburb of the hill settlement of Aledo. As the frontier threat in the Kingdom of Murcia subsided in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries — helped by the fall of the Kingdom of Granada and the union of the Castilian and Aragonese crowns — people moved down from defensive mountain positions into the Guadalentín valley. Totana eventually overtook Aledo in importance, though the two did not become separate municipalities until 1793.

In 1873 Totana joined the short-lived Cantonal revolt centred on Cartagena, forming its own Revolutionary Committee. A railway connection arrived in 1885 with the opening of the Alcantarilla–Lorca line, part of what would become the Murcia–Granada railway. In 1918, King Alfonso XIII granted Totana the formal title of city, recognising its growth in agriculture, industry, and commerce.

The most archaeologically significant site in the area is La Bastida de Totana, a fortified Bronze Age settlement on a hill outside the town. It is considered one of the most important sites of its kind in continental Europe, central to understanding the Argan Culture. The site shows Oriental influences and architecture that researchers have compared to that of Troy II. Alongside it, Las Cabezuelas preserves a long sequence of occupation running from the Bronze Age to around 1100 AD, spanning the Andalusian period.

The Church of Santiago el Mayor was built between 1535 and 1567, replacing a small chapel that had become inadequate as the valley population grew after the fall of Granada. The building is Tuscan in style with a Plateresque doorway, a basilica-plan interior of three naves and six bays with side chapels, and a polygonal apse. The ceiling is a Mudéjar coffered work made by Esteban Riberón of Lorca. The high altar holds a large Baroque retable with Solomonic columns decorated with vine leaves, and the gilded tabernacle was the work of Antonio Caro el Viejo, from Orihuela.

The Parish Church of the Tres Avemarías opened in 1604. The Franciscan Order established itself in Totana in 1602, receiving the hermitage of San Roque and adjacent land in the Barrio de Triana, where they built the Monastery of San Buenaventura. The current church is Renaissance in style and retains a crypt and wall frescoes inside.

The Sanctuary of Santa Eulalia — locally known as La Santa — sits on the slopes of Sierra Espuña, 7 km from town at 600 metres above sea level. A small sanctuary existed here from the thirteenth century, built by Knights of the Order of Santiago on land granted by Alfonso X. The present building dates from 1574. Its interior walls are covered with paintings from 1624 depicting the life and miracles of the saint, scenes from the life of Christ, and Franciscan subjects. The work spans roughly 200 square metres, with 48 scenes arranged in two bands and around 216 principal figures, attributed to Friar Antonio Bernón. A fountain in front of the sanctuary was historically believed to have healing properties.

The Hermitage of San Roque stands on a hill to the north of the town centre and dates from the sixteenth century.

Totana covers 287 square kilometres in the Guadalentín valley, at the foot of Sierra Espuña, on the natural corridor linking the Levante with Andalusia. It sits about 50 km from the regional capital Murcia and about 30 km from the Mediterranean coast at Mazarrón. The nearest airports are San Javier at 90 km and Alicante El Altet at 125 km.

The town has good road connections via the Almería–Granada motorway, which links it eastward toward central Murcia and westward toward Lorca and Andalusia.