Reconquista & Repopulation

Fernando III takes Seville (1248); the Treaty of Alcañices (1297) fixes the Portuguese border; the empty Andévalo is repopulated piecemeal by knights' orders, Portuguese settlers, and Galician shepherds.

Part of Andévalo

7 moments in this segment.

1. 1262 — Reconquest of Niebla. Alfonso X of Castile takes Niebla in 1262, dissolving the last Andalusi polity in what is now Huelva province. Niebla's town walls survive, but the Andévalo countryside is depopulated and will take three centuries to refill.
2. 1285 — Sancho IV — knights' orders + repopulation. Under Sancho IV, the military orders (Santiago, Calatrava) and seigneurial families like the Guzmáns take charge of repopulating the western Andévalo. Many of the future villages — Puebla de Guzmán among them — date their charters to this generation.
3. 1297-09-12 — Treaty of Alcañices — Portuguese border. The Treaty of Alcañices (12 Sept 1297) fixes the Castile-Portugal border substantially along the line it still follows. The western Andévalo becomes Castilian frontier country, looking across at the Portuguese Alentejo — the same border Schengen will reopen in 1995.
4. 1330 — Puebla de Guzmán. south of Santa Bárbara, takes its name from the Guzmán family that repopulated it after the Reconquista. Its romería to the Virgen de la Peña — a procession to a hilltop sanctuary — is one of the most attended in the Andévalo.
5. 1369 — House of Guzmán — counts of Niebla. The Guzmán family becomes the dominant seigneurial house of western Huelva; they hold the County of Niebla from the late 14th century. Several Andévalo villages including Puebla de Guzmán carry the family name into their toponym.
6. 1400 — Andévalo repopulation pattern. The slow medieval repopulation produces the Andévalo's characteristic dual-hamlet villages: two small clusters of houses around a shared chapel and water source, with a fortified high point above. Santa Bárbara's El Hornacho + Los Palacios is one of dozens of examples.
7. 1400 — El Hornacho + Los Palacios — the merger. The pre-charter Santa Bárbara is two distinct hamlets on adjacent rises a short walk apart: El Hornacho (the larger, named for an oven or kiln) and Los Palacios (a few stone houses on the slope). They share fields, water, and a chapel dedicated to Saint Barbara; over the 15th century the boundary dissolves.