HISTORY
Archaeological remains found in Arboleas suggest population settlements dating back to the Neololithic and Bronze ages. Beyond this, Argaric, Phoenician, Carthaginian and Roman remains have also been unearthed. However, it was the Muslim era that left the most permanent mark on the community, surviving today in the form of popular architecture, gastronomy, habits and customs. In 1488, the Catholic Monarchs conquered the Almanzora Valley, which became señorío, along with Albox, Albánchez, and Benitagla, passing on to the Duke of Najera and then to the First Marquis de los Vélez.
During the rebellion of the Moors, some battles were fought in the municipality. After the Rebellion of the Alpujarras, and the decreed expulsion of the Moors from the Kingdom of Granada, Arboleas was repopulated with 30 Christian families from other peninsular kingdoms. But the economic depression that followed this rebellion was no less and the Almanzora Moors, as in the rest of the Kingdom of Granada, were deprived of their property and expelled from their lands, which were redistributed to Christian families from all over the world.
From the beginning of the seventeenth century, a slow migratory current would move towards the interior of the Almanzora Valley, motivated by the dangers that increasingly lined the coast (due to expelled Moorish ships expelled and others from North Africa) and the abundance of land to be exploited. This resulted in a major expansion of the demographics in these regions from 1718. This growth slowed down in the second half of the eighteenth century due to the locust epidemics, that destroyed crops, and earthquakes.
From the nineteenth century, these rural populations began to recover and expand once again, motivated by the mining activity of Serón and Cuevas del Almanzora. However, this growth was again limited by the cholera epidemics of 1855, 1860 and 1885, together with the mining crises of the middle and end of the century and the periods of drought. These caused a repeated population decline.
A global migratory trend towards Europe from 1950 led to a more stable repopulation. Combined with marble extracting processes and the implementation of the Region of European Rural Development Plans, by the end of the twentieth century, Arboleas was a fully formed community.