History of Montizón
Given its strategic position as a passageway between Levante or La Mancha and the Guadalquivir Valley, Montizón has been settled since ancient times. Its earliest settlers are attested to by numerous remains including flint-tipped arrows, axes and carved stones, collected in Torre-Alber, and ceramics found in Cabeza Chica. The sophisticated infrastructure of Roman roads boosted the strategic importance of the town. Remains of Roman roads have been documented locally, and a milestone was found near Aldeahermosa, which indicated the distance to Contrebia, in the Ebro Valley, and which has been identified as the Camino de Aníbal. At this time, the area was under the orbit of the city of Ilugo (Santisteban del Puerto), as evidenced by an epigraphic inscription found in Venta de los Santos. In Islamic times, the town was a small farm estate that was conquered with the rest of the region by Fernando III el Santo in 1226. Due to the importance placed on livestock by the new Christian settlers, the estate was abandoned between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, becoming an area dependent on Santisteban del Puerto. In the eighteenth century, the area which is today’s Montizón was known as “Barranco Hondo”. In 1767, it was chosen by Pablo de Olavide, intendant of King Carlos III, to found one of the nuclei of the New Populations, according to the Plan of Colonization of Sierra Morena, whose purpose was to safeguard the road from Andalusia to La Mancha, where bandits assaulted donkey packs that transported merchandise from one region to another. The first settlers who populated Montizón were Central Europeans, predominantly German, Flemish, Swiss, French and Italian, who were given a house, farm implements and several fanegas of mountain land for growing cereals and olives. Montizón was created as the head of the parish with two villages: Aldeahermosa and Venta de los Santos. Among the objectives of its creation was to ensure an area heavily travelled by Murcians and Valencians. The municipality was originally formed of six houses, a church and a granary. Throughout the nineteenth century, a consolidation process was undertaken, and by the 1850s there were 408 houses inhabited by 352 inhabitants, as well as a school. In 1808, Montizón requested to have its own Town Hall, which was granted until 1888, when it came to depend on Castellar, before regaining its independence in 1906.