Costa del Sol Towns
History of Alora
Alora is a municipality located in the Guadalhorce Valley; its inhabitants are known
as "Perote" (or alorenos). There are several versions of the origin
of the term "Perote", but is best known for being the name of the
first alderman.
Alora spans three hills and is crowning glory of
the Guadalhorce Valley sitting between these three large hills on the right
bank of the River Guadalhorce and the railway route between Malaga and Seville,
Cordoba and Granada.
The towers of the castle, which used to watch over men and goods traveling into
the hinterland The town sits discretely between two small promontories and
Hacho hill (559 meters).
The municipality covers an extensive territory,
arcing through northern Central Limestone which is the location of El Chorro,
the Sierra de Huma (1,191 m.) and the Gaitanes Gorge, where the famous Caminito
del Rey (so named because it was opened by King Alfonso XIII) .
To the west, the Sierra de Aguas (949 m) extends to the mountain complex of
Serrania de Ronda, providing a landscape of pine forest that extends from the Guadalhorce River to the road that connects with Alora
Carratraca. The landscape is smooth with small hills occupied by cereal, some
remnants of old olive trees and oaks, is the landscape of the natural corridor
that crosses the province from Periana to Alora.
Alora history dates back to prehistory in the
Hoyo del Conde, a little over a kilometer from the city. The ecological
environment (hunting, water, nature protection) was the home the Tartesos and
the Phoenicians who discovered the commercial potential of the area.
The latter is the foundation of the castle, which
later the Romans harnessed and fortified. The presence of Rome has left significant footprints on this
land, from the milestone that marked the Roman road on which the inscription
appears Municipium Iluritanum (79 BC) to various Alora remains to prove that
the Roman local population was Latino with the name of Iluro.
In Alora, military leaders that gave glory to
the Empire are highlighted by families who left traces of their presence in Rome itself. During the
Visigothic period, they built the core of the fortress, which was later
expanded by the Arabs that after their entry to the mainland of Spain
soon came to Alora. From this period we must mention the rebellion of Omar Ben Hamsun,
and that the proximity of Bobastro (his stronghold) had to have significant
effects on these times.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Christian kings
tried in vain to take the town of Alor,
one after another who resisted all attacks. In one of these battles at the foot
of the ramparts, in 1434, the Andalusian Adelantado Don Diego de Rivera died,
making him a folk hero.
In 1484, the square in 1484 fell into the hands of troops of the Catholic Monarchs.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave Alora remarkable prosperity
fostered by the presence of many distinguished people who lived here or came to
visit.
In the year 1628, Alora was segregated from the municipality of Malaga,
according to the minutes signed by Felipe IV, whose original is kept in the
municipal archives, ending with the assertion that segregated Alora "For
ever and ever."
According to the cadastre of the Marques de la
Ensenada, Alora it in the seventeenth century with 500 people among which there
were 28 priests and 8 retailers, not hermits or monks of the Convent of Flores.
Everything suggests that the church did possess substantial wealth
Among the theories are less meaning that
the claim that the original name of the place means "people from springs,
whose voice would be Arabic Ena Bena-A. Furthermore, it is believed that the
potential Madina al-Bina name could refer to "the wealth of the family
al-Madina", which historical data was a wealthy Muslim family fromMalaga who may have owned
land in the area. Finally it has been suggested that the name of the
municipality referred to a lineage where Arabic "al-Madan Ben would like
to refer to the lineage of the Madan.
During the French invasion, the people in Alora
were staunchly patriotic with episodes of resistance during the War of
Independence.
In the church tower the remaining shots that knocked down the commemorative
plaque of the Constitution of Cadiz, that were fired by a squadron of French
cavalry, on August 1, 1823 that dismissed the City Council can still be seen.
The nineteenth century in the history of Alora was marked, as in the rest of Spain,
by infighting between absolutists and constitutionalists, and Elizabethan
Carlists, progressives and moderates and republicans and monarchists.
With the beginning of the twentieth century, almost identical to the nineteenth
begin emigration, particularly to America. The decades of the 40s and
50s were difficult and required reconstruction after the Spanish Civil War.
In 1979 they held the first democratic municipal elections, the winning party UCD
(Unión de Centro DemocrAtico), gave the town it first mayor, the socialist
candidate D. Pedro Aranda Basin.
