HISTORY OF DALÍAS
The origins of Dalías date to the Al-Andalus period. The current population corresponds to the old Muslim town of Ambrox, although other data indicates that the primitive population was located 2km from the current situation, in El Campo, where there are remains of tombs, aqueducts, houses and streets. Its name comes from the Arabic word dalaya, which means vineyard. The village was a farmstead with a fortress and mosque. Some remains of the fortress can still be seen today, like the watchtowers that provided a system of defense for the area. The most popular of them is the Torre de la Garita.
Before the War of the Alpujarras (1568-1570) the town consisted of six hundred houses, seven bread ovens, seven oil mills and twenty flour mills. After the War the Moors were expelled and the territory was depopulated. The Christian repopulation occurred in 1573. In 1753, Dalías formed a Town Hall together with the towns of Adra and Berja, obtaining its final independence in 1920.
In the early nineteenth century, Dalías experienced a spectacular demographic growth due to the development of mining. The mining crisis of the end of the century coincided with the start of the production of the Ohanes grape; these two factors together redirected the town’s core economic output.
Until 1982, its municipal term reached the coast, but the exploitation of intensive agriculture under plastic made the entire population move to the so-called Campo de Dalías and also caused an unprecedented increase in population in this area, around El Ejido. In 1981, while Dalías had just 3,500 inhabitants, the concentration on the coast was around 33,000 inhabitants. This fact caused the partition of the municipal term.