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Andújar,
Iberian Lynx Land
Historic centre declarated of cultural interest
WHAT TO KNOW about Andujar 4/4
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Toponymic of Andujar
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Brief Andujar history
Brief Andujar History
What to know about Andujar
Prehistory and Antiquity
Andújar and its surroundings have always had a privileged situation for being an intersection of trade routes and of ways of movement of population, with the consequent penetration of artistic and cultural influences from different origins.
Since the remote times of Prehistory, man has shown his presence in our land with important material remains, beginning in the Lower Paleolithic with the Achelean deposit of Arroyo Escobar, where there have been approximately 1.500 useful ones of quartzite, carved songs and bifaces have been found. mainly, with a dating of about 300,000 years ago. Archeology demonstrates the ancient exploitation of the rich copper mines of Sierra Morena, their commercialization being channeled through the Jándula and Guadalquivir rivers during the Copper and Bronze Ages. At the confluence of both rivers is the important Valdezorras necropolis of the Argar Culture, with graves in cista and funeral trousseaus of smooth ceramics, flat copper axes and dirks of clinches from about 1,200 years before Christ. Scattered around Sierra Morena there are numerous Final Bronze tombs, excavated from the granite rocks, many of them anthropomorphic.
The Phoenician and Greek colonizations also left their mark on the Andújar life. As an example, we can cite a magnificent white glass paste scarab with a beautiful engraving representing two faced beetles and a sun disk in the center, symbol of the resurrection (6th century BC). From the Villares comes an interesting bronze Egyptian ring, with a winged sphinx engraved on the gemstone and a winged sun disk on the top. A precious golden lion's head, pendant on a necklace, was found in the Jandula River and can be dated to the 7th century B.C.
Isturgi
The Iberian era has left numerous archaeological remains: coins, ceramics and architectural remains. In the Villares de Andújar there is located the ancient Iberian city of Isturgi, also called by the Romans Municipium Triumphales. Traditionally it was believed that the city of Iliturgi was located here, but archeology has shown that its true location is in Cerro Máquiz near Mengíbar.
It is in the Roman imperial era when the Andújar area took on great relevance, especially in the Villares de Andújar where archaeologists have excavated the most important Roman pottery "terra sigillata" more important found till now in Spain, with four kilns and numerous and beautiful Glasses of this bright red varnish ceramic, which was distributed throughout the South of the Iberian Peninsula and exported to North Africa.
Also from Roman times there have been countless finds of gold, silver and bronze coins, amphoras, chandeliers, marble statues, mosaics, tombstones with Latin inscriptions, glass glasses, etc. The Andújar stone bridge over the Guadalquivir has a clear Roman origin, although what is currently seen is, for the most part, from the 16th and 17th centuries, featuring numerous stonemason marks engraved on many of its ashlars. The last major reform carried out on this bridge, symbol of the city, was in the mid-19th century.
D. José Cruz Utrera
Oppidum en el cerro Maquiz que, tras alianzas entre cartagineses, íberos y romanos fué finalmente reconquistado y arrasado por Publio Cornelio Escipión.
www.jaenescondido.es
Puente de piedra de Andújar sobre el Guadalquivir, de claro origen romano.
Ubicación de Anduxar, Isturgi e Iliturgi en un croquis de principios del siglo XVII de Ximena Jurado
Middle Age
It is understood historically that the Middle Ages developed during the ten centuries that passed from the disappearance of the Western Roman Empire (5th century) to the fall of Constantinople in the XVth century. In those ten centuries takes place a complete transformation of the European society, politics and culture from which most of the current world will be configured.
Anduxar
In the year 711 after the battle of Guadalete the whole southern part of the peninsula would become Al-Andalus. Transferring the population from the Villares de Andújar to the current old town of Andujar, the name of Anduyar (Andújar) arose for the first time during the emirate of Mohamed I (853).
Andújar, according to its geographical location, is a strategic point in dominating the peninsula during the Middle Ages. Thus, the origin of the current city would be defined around 887 when the emir of Córdoba ordered his governor in the heart of Jaén to strengthen the defense of the city.
The final fortification of the city was the work of the Almohads from 1116. However, in 1170 they had to be repaired to mitigate the damage caused by the effects of the earthquake that devastated Andújar. A century later the city fell into the hands of the little king al-Bayyasi, who gave it to Fernando III in exchange for military help. From this moment Andújar became a strategic point for Christians, from where they organized the assault and the conquest of High Guadalquivir.
With Fernando III began the transformation of Andujar from an Islamic city to a Christian. There are low medieval times of the first churches with Gothic structures.
Andujar and the territory are declared by the monarch as land of royal status, giving it the jurisdiction of Cuenca. The end of the Middle Ages are rich in events: in 1368 a Nasrid race intends to take the city, a fact that will make its warden Juan González impossible; In 1446, King Juan II gave the town the title of "city" for its fidelity to the crown; in 1466 Enrique IV turns her into "Very noble and loyal". In 1472 Pedro de Escavias is its perpetual mayor, man of letters, song and weapon. In these years, its shield with all its elements is also formed with the municipal red banner. With Isabel la Católica the corregidores will arrive, being in 1478 Francisco de Bobadilla, the same one who orders the fortifications to be demolished and fulfill the real order.
The growth of the city in the Middle Ages surpassed the walls. Streets were built along the walls, and certain houses leaned on the walls to create them. The grouping of street workers in guilds in the Middle Ages is a phenomenon that is evident today in the expansion corresponding to Puerta del Sol, where we find Crossbowmen, Notaries, Teachers, Mesones, etc. and the one corresponding to the expansion of San Bartolomé, where we find other popular trades such as Meloneras, Vendors, Shipyards, etc.
Algunos de los restos que aún se conservan de la antigua muralla almohade.
Andújar en una acuarela de Pier Maria Baldi, realizada en 1668
Andujar in an engraving of Bernardo de Espinalt, 1789
The Modern Age; 16th to 18th centuries
Introduction
With the discovery of America financed by the Catholic Monarchs, began a new era for Spain, which logically will also be the same for Andújar.
Having come to the throne of Spain Carlos I, he needed to gather the Cortes to compel them to raise taxes, in order to be able to be provided with the money necessary to proclaim himself Emperor of Germany. This fiscal pressure bothered many Castilian cities, which in 1520 rose up in arms, constituting the Communities of Castile. Andujar in this historical moment, as a city of state land, remained faithful to the King, who in fidelity yielded the villages of San Vicente, San Julián and Villalva, ordering them to repopulate.
Demography
During the 16th century the number of residents will gradually increase, to have in 1591 with approximately thirteen thousand inhabitants, who will not be diminished at least in the first half of the 17th century; since the epidemic of 1602 did not cause many human losses; although the 1680 was very deadly, being thousands of lost souls.
The epidemics will be joined by droughts and intense rains that will cause serious damage to agriculture and livestock. So there will be bad harvests that will cause hunger and poverty among the population.
During these centuries the emigration to America of the residents of the province of Jaén was relatively small, so the demographic loss for this reason was small for Andújar. The greatest incidence in this regard was the war in Catalonia, which forced continuous cams.
The inhabitants will be mostly Christian; although they will live converted Jewish, moorish and gypsy, who will live in an urban area configured by the territorial division of the parishes of Santa María, Santiago, Santa María and San Miguel, within the medieval walled enclosure, the latter with a suburb and finally San Bartolomé, corresponding to the urban expansion of the 16th century.
The economy
The population of Andújar was made up of farmers and ranchers, in addition to a certain number of artisans, the economy being essentially agro-livestock. Industrialization did not yet exist.
Cereal production is very low in these times, which is turns out to be insufficient to supply the city, depending a lot on purchases abroad, promoting the increase in prices that will affect the neighbors.
The nearby town of Arjona and Andújar in 16th century contributed 60% of the oil production of the Kingdom of Jaén, creating farmhouses that concentrated day labor. The next century there will be an abandonment of the fields due to a demographic decline, coupled with periods of poor harvests due to abundant rains and droughts.
The increase in vine cultivation in the 16th and 17th centuries will be detrimental to wheat, caused by atmospheric instability. The advantages in the substitution were several, being the most productive vineyard, yields harvests every year and requires less labor. In Andújar large areas of land were dedicated in Sierra Morena, in the areas of Peñallana, Alcaparrosa and Los Majuelos. Production in the 17th century will be devoted to local consumption, from January to August, while for the other months, better quality Lucena (Córdoba) wine was brought.
The cattle ranch was made up of sheep, goat, horse, pig and cow huts. In the 16th century, 3% of Andújar's population were ranchers. The pastures of the mountain range were dedicated to the pasture of the transhumant cattle, that spent in them the winter. There will also be cattle ranches of brave bulls destined for the bullfighting celebrations that were held in the city, to which there was so much fans.
Trade will be intense in these centuries, favored by the geographical situation of Andújar, an obligatory passage between Castilla and Andalusia.
The mountain will provide hunting and the rivers, especially the Guadalquivir, fishing. The City Council fixed closed seasons.
The union activity of the Low Middle Ages will be increasing in the centuries we study. Dyers, Chandlers, Saddlers, Shoemakers, Sederos, Locksmiths, Blacksmiths, Rejeros, Boilermakers, Shepherds, Tailors, Potters, Watchmakers, etc., whose workshops or shops played a prominent role within the local economy.
During the sixteenth century the union of iron workers reached a great development in Andújar, as in the seventeenth century it will have the sederos, proliferating the cultivation of mulberry trees to feed the worms.
As in previous centuries, the economy was still based on agriculture and livestock, both depending heavily on climatic changes. Locust and sparrow pests will destroy the crops, with the City Council having to order their slaughter.
In 1766 problems occur due to the absence of wheat and the increase in price, which will affect the final cost of bread, the basis of food for the neighbors; which will protest before the local authorities, having to look for grain to fill in a deposit, located in Alhóndiga street, and to carry out experiments mixing different qualities and quantities of flour to lower the final price. In this century, the province of Jaén was the tenth producer of wheat, with insufficient quantities to supply it .; hence the problems noted.
In the seven hundred Andujar will be the main Jaen producer of ceramics, the potters will export their products to Madrid and other places, but the lack of investments, the old of the tools and the scarce technical ability, prevented taking advantage of the opportunity of the moment. To this production must be added the soap and leather tanning factories.
The improvement of the Camino Real, Madrid-Cádiz, will lead Andújar to contribute a large amount of labor in 1788, favoring the stopping of errands, commerce and the installation of a post office.
The church
The Episcopate of Jaén was divided in the year 1511 into several archpriesties, among which we have Andújar's, made up of five parishes, previously indicated, in addition to the parish churches of the villages in its jurisdiction: La Higuera, Villanueva and El Marmolejo.
A series of hermitages were distributed in the urban area and surroundings and in Sierra Morena.
The local clergy was grouped in the University of Clerics and Beneficiaries, under the brotherhood of San Pedro.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will be times of foundations of religious orders that will come to join the existing ones such as Poor Clares, Minims (1495) and Trinitarians (1244), thus those of Franciscans of Assisi (1514), Trinitarians (1587) were founded. , Carmelites (1590), Hospital of San Juan de Dios (1618), Jesuits, Capuchins (1645) and Capuchins (1682). Another important foundation will be the Casa Cuna (1622) to raise foundling children, the hospital for poor collected women and the hospital for Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza, run by the brotherhood of the same name.
The Council of Trent will promote the increase of the cult to the saints and to their relics. Thus in 1597 a relic of San Eufrasio will be brought from Valdemao (Galicia), to which he was received by Patron. In 1640 it will be one of Saint Potential, which becomes Patroness and was processed every May 15 with that of San Eufrasio.
The annual and occasional festivals will have their highest point in the 17th century, to decrease in splendor in the 18th. Pilgrimage of the Virgen de la Cabeza, last Sunday in April, Corpus Christi, Saint Euphrasius, Easter, bullfights, prayers, etc.
The church in these centuries of the Modern Age will have in Andújar a series of people who stood out for their special virtues. The religious Trinitarian Marcos Criado, victim of the Moors in the Alpujarras of Granada, the preacher of Felipe II, Francisco Terrones del Caño, Bishop of Tuy y León, and the Trinitarian Sor Lucia Yánez, who predicted the epidemic of 1680.
The significant presence of Jewish converts in Andújar, caused the Court of the Inquisition of Córdoba, to act on several of its neighbors.
Outstanding was the attempt in 1747 to transfer the Collegiate Church of Santa María del Alcázar from the city of Baeza to the parish church of San Miguel of Andujar, as the City Council did not successfully end different lawsuits in court. Another negative aspect was the suppression in 1773 of the pilgrimage of the Virgen de la Cabeza, by order of the King, due to frauds at the Royal Treasury Department for the sale of reliable Galician mules.
Illustration; 18th century
The most significant thing for Andújar in the seven hundredth will be the loss of the municipal term when in the reign of Carlos III, in an attempt at agrarian reform, Sierra Morena (1767) was colonized, with colonists from central Europe, Catalonia, Valencia, etc. . For this, our city had to transfer area to found the village of El Rumblar, beginning the delimitation in 1771.
It should also be noted that in 1791 the headquarters of the Municipal Council passed from the Plaza de Santa María to the Plaza del Mercado, coming to occupy the headquarters of the old 17th-century Comedy House.
The population
This century begins with six thousand five hundred inhabitants, going so far as to rely on at the end of the same one with nine thousand persons. This growth agrees with the general norm of demographic growth for all Spain.
Andújar was the capital of its administrative area, one of the five in which the province of Jaén was divided, as a city of state land, it had a third category Corregidor, and jurisdiction in Marmolejo and Villanueva de Andújar, which it had kept for centuries previous, and that it would not lose until 1790 the second locality and the following year the first of the mentioned ones. Passing both villages to be independent.
In 1737 a Monte de Piedad was founded to benefit the poor children. These are difficult years with epidemics, poor harvests, rising food prices, begging, high infant mortality, etc., leading to emigration to other places, such as Granada.
Some reform measures were positive for Andújar, while the expulsion of the Jesuits caused the closure of their school and the teachers of the City Council were not sufficient to attend to the school population.
Enrique Gómez Martínez Real Academia de la Historia Cronista Oficial de Andújar.
Contemporary history; 19th and 10th centuries
Andújar in the 19th century
Andújar in the mid-19th century, according to Madoz's testimony, was made up of:
"1,796 houses, quite regular and with interior comfort, clarity and cleanliness, distributed in 50 streets, 8 squares and two irregular squares, although that of the Constitution is adorned with the beautiful building of the town hall, which is the best of Andújar: The butcher's house, the slaughterhouse and the corn exchange or grain market are not lacking in elegance, especially the first and the last, which are also very comfortable for the uses they are intended for; there are several inns and cafes ... Andújar has up to the Guadalquivir a good walk with streets for people and for cars and horses, adorned with beautiful groves. Other malls are on the road to Madrid and other points on the outskirts...
The public instruction establishments are: 3 first-letter schools for children, where they are taught to read, write, elements of arithmetic, Spanish grammar and Christian doctrine, and 150 children attend it in the first class, 110 in the second and 100 in the third; three other girls' schools, which learn, in addition to the tasks of their sex, to read, write, Christian doctrine, and some elements of Castilian arithmetic and grammar; 150 disciples are counted in the first class, 90 in the second and 65 in the third...
The municipal charity board is in charge of a hospital called de la Caridad, founded by Juan de Matienzo in the year 1563, the hospital religious of San Juan de Dios taking over in 1625; a shelter house for helpless old people, another for old women, also helpless, a foundling house, which welcomed 120 in the referred year of 1842 ”.
The 1847 census established for Andújar and its term a population of 10,190 inhabitants, 150 more inhabitants in relation to 1794. The demographic behavior of the city will be quite different in the second half of the century, in which Andújar will have an increase in population of 6,309 inhabitants, which is equivalent to a growth of 38.2% with respect to 1847.
The predominant economic characteristic of the 19th century is the clear predominance of the primary sector, in which the abundance of day labor and the high concentration of property will be its most characteristic features. In 1861, the active labor force dedicated to the primary sector rose to 66.4%, compared to 12.7% in the secondary sector and 20.7% in the tertiary sector. However, as we approach the end of the century, the diversification of the economy begins to be greater, without changing the percentages previously reflected substantially.
The inauguration of the Manzanares-Córdoba railway line with a station in Andújar will be of great economic importance. It is the first real symptom of modernization that the city will have and that will serve as a stimulus to the trade of some of its traditional products: oils, soaps, brick, ceramics, which had been so difficult to exit until then. In the first years of the Restoration the steam as energy source will be applied for the first time. These are isolated experiences in the production of olive oil that have nothing to do with the almost artisanal reality that occurs in the rest of the transformation activity.
Andujar and the 20th century
With the new century the city will begin to awaken from its former lethargy. Electricity, telephone, cinema, sewerage, industrial mechanization, urban improvements will gradually shape their new reality. Its population will increase between 1900 and 1930 by 4,792 inhabitants, going from 16,302 to 21,094 inhabitants between the reference dates.
In the first third of the 20th century, Andujar's economy continued to be based on the primary sector. In 1930, 64.7% of active labor was related to the primary sector, one point below the provincial average and 5.6 points more than at the beginning of the century. In 1930, day laborers represented 93% of the total active labor force in the primary sector, a percentage that far exceeded the supply of work that the proper sector was capable of providing and in which property was concentrated in less than 8% of the population.
According to the 1930 census, workers in the secondary sector were distributed in 49 trades, fifteen fewer than in 1880. From the second decade on, a modernization of the sector took place, an example of which was the appearance of companies such as:
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Electra of the Guadalquivir.
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The waterfall of the mill of Casas Nuevas in 1914.
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The flour factory “Ntra. Mrs. De la Cabeza ”- operating in 1915 with a share capital of 300,000 pesetas.
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The Divine Shepherdess of José Jiménez Gálvez
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The Benayas, Montes and Gavilán de la Torre pomace factory, inaugurated in 1921.
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The pomace and sulphide factory of Pablo Jiménez and CIA.
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The Oleum Society.
The tertiary sector was made up of 961 workers, of which 246 were workers and represented, inside the entire calculation of the active labor 16.9%, a percentage lower than that recorded in 1880, which rose to 20.8%. The sector is made up of 79 professions, among which the number of workers stood out: 215 employees, 105 maids, 97 merchants, 89 religious, 53 clerks and 51 barbers. These six professions total 610 workers, which is equivalent to 63.4 in the sector.
Andújar will remain throughout the Civil War on the Republican side, its proximity to the front line, located in the vicinity of Montoro, will not allow him any peace in those tragic years, in which the siege of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Head it would be his prelude and the struggle of the maquis in the Sierra his epilogue.
Generations marked by war to which some of Andujar's most outstanding men and women belong, such as Antonio Alcalá Venceslada or Francisca Cristina Saenz de Tejada, who signed under the pseudonym "Gracián Quijano", singers such as Rafael Romero "el Gallina", painters like Luis Aldehuela, etc.
D. Luis Pedro Pérez García
