HISTORY
Human presence in this area dates back to the Bronze Age, evident from a series of remains discovered in the Sierra de Cabra. During the Iberian era, the region formed part of a commercial route linking Granada with the Guadalquivir Valley. In the Hispano-Muslim period, a citadel was erected on the Cerro de San Juan. Some historians suggest it could be the Bagtawira fortress, belonging to a significant family that rebelled against the Umayyads at the close of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth century.
In 1245, Fernando III “el Santo” conquered the town, which later became dependent on Úbeda. When cattle ranchers began to settle in the area in the late fifteenth century, a community was gradually built. The town was a very advanced enclave of the Castilian line when the reconquest was carried out by King Fernando III in 1245, following the capture of Úbeda in 1233. Cabra del Santo Cristo later segregated from Úbeda in 1593.
The ‘Repertoire of all the Roads of Spain’ by Pedro Juan de Villuga indicates that, in 1546, the route between Toledo and Almería passed through Fiñana, Guadix, El Hacho and Fuente Leyva in the municipality of Huelma, Cabra del Santo Cristo and later Torreperogil.
In documents from 1755, the town is cited as a manor town belonging to the Marchioness of La Rambla. In the seventeenth century, forestry land was transferred to use for dryland cereal due to the testimonies of Ubet farmers, who stated that the clearing had deprived them of pasture. It was also in the eighteenth century that the image of the Holy Christ began to be venerated, which Jerónimo de Sanvítores donated to the town, and which is located in the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Expectación. One of his sons was the blessed and martyred missionary Diego Luis de Sanvítores, who spent periods in the family manor house as a child and spread devotion to Santo Cristo de Burgos during his missions in Mexico and the Philippines.
In the eighteenth century, the town was integrated into the district of Úbeda and Baeza. The local plans of Cabra del Santo Cristo from the years 1659 and 1660 are of great value, documenting its toponymy cartographically, inscribing the land of the municipal area and the town in the General Archive of Simancas. The geographical information of Cabra del Santo Cristo in the document on the Overtaking of Cazorla of 1787, deposited in the National Library, is also relevant.
In 1836, the village of Larva, which previously belonged to Quesada, was annexed, becoming an independent municipality later, in 1924. In 1898, the Cabra del Santo Cristo-Alicún station was inaugurated, on the Linares-Almería line, designed mainly for the freight traffic between the Linares-La Carolina mining district and the port of Almería, which is still in service today.