Colonial villages that disappeared during the foral period in the New Settlements of Sierra Morena and Andalusia (1767-1835)
Francisco José Pérez-Schmid Fernández
Department of Anthropology, Geography and History
University of Jaén
ORCID: 0000-0002-9671-5953
Published: 22/12/2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31338/ahi.2023.2.8
ABSTRACT: The arrival of 6,000 German and Flemish Catholic settlers, starting from 1767, to the New Populations of Sierra Morena and Andalusia posed the challenge of settling them in an uninhabited territory, initially trying a dispersed settlement. However, the diverse results of its implementation forced those responsible for the project to combine the disseminated with villages in lower Andalusia, while in Sierra Morena, they ended up centralizing the majority of the population in villages. The early disappearance of some of the nuclei, mainly in the mountains, leads us to analyse some of the factors that could have mediated their early abandonment, such as population crisis, orography, torrential rains, the Spanish War of Independence (Peninsular War), the low quality of the constructions, the loss of importance of communication routes, etc. In this way, we will know the dynamics to which they were subjected, which made it possible for them to be abandoned and forgotten only a few decades after their foundation.
KEYWORDS: villages, New Populations, Pablo de Olavide, Reformism, Sierra Morena.
