Villanueva del Trabuco

Interesting Facts of Villanueva del Trabuco 

Surface Area: 60 square kilometres

Population: 5,385

What the natives are called: Trabuqueños

Outstanding Sights: Nuestra Señora de los Dolores church, Virgen del Puente chapel, Fuente de los Caños (Los Caños fountain)

Geographical Location: in the south-eastern part of the Antequera region. This municipality forms a part of Nororma (acronym in Spanish for Northeast Málaga), a sub-region that encompasses several municipalities in the north-eastern part of the province of Málaga. The village is 690 metres above sea level and is 45 kilometres from Málaga and 34 from Antequera. The average precipitation in the area is 800 litres per square metre and the average temperature is about 14º C.
 

The territory of Villanueva del Trabuco covers the easternmost part of the Antequera region and thus adjoins the province of Granada and the La Axarquía region. It sits at the foot of the Gorda and San Jorge mountain ranges, where its highest elevations are found. Its terrain, apart from the aforementioned mountains, is characterised by gentle relief and is mainly covered by olive groves and grain fields.

Streams come down from the mountains to form the River Guadalhorce. This river is generally considered to begin, if one must assign a precise point, at the Fuente de los Caños (Fountain of the Spouts). A number of streams are fed by the many springs at the foot of the mountains, and they are rarely without water even at the height of summer. This municipality’s subsoil is rich in water, whose effects can be observed in the abundance of chopos (black poplars) and other poplars and ash trees that generally grow near watercourses.

Just as in the neighbouring municipality of Villanueva del Rosario, there were human settlements here from since the Prehistoric period, and this area was later populated more or less massively during the Roman and Visigothic eras. The known history of this place halts at the latter era and there is no evidence of new settlements until the eighteenth century when they were motivated by the interest of Charles III in repopulating these lands, which are very suitable for certain crops but which in those times were practically virgin soil.

Due to the lack of human presence in this territory for so many centuries it became overrun with predators and the residents of the nearest town, Archidona, were therefore reluctant to work in it. There was the additional problem that the inhabited areas were quite distant from these lands whose agricultural potential had not been discovered yet.

The ministers Campomanes and Olaride reported the situation in this place to Charles III and the king decided to use foreign colonists to carry out the settlement since the natives refused to work in this area. Thus, some 6,000 Flemish and German colonists –Catholics, of course– arrived in Andalusia to establish permanent residence in, among other places, those in the province of Málaga that now bear the name of Villanueva.

It should be noted, however, that a document from 1620 that is kept in the Municipal Archives of Archidona takes note of a place called Trabuco, a grazing area of about 300 "fanegas" (an ancient measure of land). Villanueva del Trabuco would become separate from Archidona in 1808.