History of Lentegí
In 1933, a prehistoric necropolis was discovered in the area known as Umbría Tinajas, belonging to the Argaric bronze age; the remains are currently in the Archaeological and Ethnological Museum of Granada.
The first mention in a written document corresponds to the reign of Abderramán III in the year 941. During the period of occupation by Muslim populations there were three neighbourhoods: Lentexit or Barrio Alto, Pilar or Barrio Bajo and Haarataljima or Cartagina, with its mosques and cemeteries. The irrigation waters came from the Wadi-i-hama (Guardadamas) River and there were three irrigation ditches, each directed to a neighbourhood. On the foundations of the main Moorish mosque, the current Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Rosario was built in the sixteenth century (1543-1547).
During the Moorish War, on March 7, 1570, Lentegí was burned and destroyed by Don Antonio Luna’s troops, which were made up of about two hundred soldiers from Almuñécar. Later the Moors built a fort in the town and it was attacked again at the end of March by Captain Antonio de Berrío. After the expulsion of the Moors that same year, during the time of King Felipe II, Lentegí was repopulated in 1572 with thirty residents from other peninsular Kingdoms.
In the Cadastre of the Marqués de la Ensenada of 1752, it is mentioned that the town had fifty-nine residents, sixty-four houses, 383.25 irrigated marshes, 235 bushels of dry land, 20.5 vineyards and 141 bushes. Starting in the 1970s, with the arrival of subtropical crops and the loquat, life in the town gradually changed.
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