History of Guarromán -
During the second half of the eighteenth century, the Court of Carlos III undertook a series of social reforms aimed at providing the agricultural working classes with financial independence; the aim was to revitalize the agrarian structures that had been stagnant for centuries, giving rise to a new class of agricultural owners from less privileged groups, who would be given enough land (about 33 hectares) that they could cultivate it and inhabit it with their families.
The project was carried out to repopulate the uninhabited foothills of Sierra Morena, protected by the Population Law promulgated by Carlos III in July 1767. The ‘New Towns of Sierra Morena’ were born under his tutelage, including the Real Population of the Guarromán Site, with the laudable purpose of creating a model society of farmers. The King put Pablo de Olavide y Jáuregui in charge of the operation, which was considered the star project of his reign.
6,000 German and Flemish settlers, all of them supposedly Catholic, were recruited in Central Europe by the Bavarian adventurer Juan Gaspar de Thürriegel, along with some other French, Italian, Swiss and Austro-Hungarians, as well as some Catalan, Valencian and Galician families. Small and orderly populations were established along the banks of the royal road that united, and continues to unite, Madrid with Andalusia, and which wanted to protect itself from bandits and robbers.
In the middle of August 1767, a month before the first settlers arrived, Pablo de Olavide decided that one of the first towns would be built next to the old Venta de Guadarromán; this site became what we now know as Guarromán.
It was not just agricultural settlers that injected life into the area; almost a century later, around 1861, under the protection of the resurgence of the lead and silver mines of Sierra Morena, miners from a variety of locations including Almería (los tarantos) and the lower Alpujarra de Granada (los mangurrinos), contributed to the blossoming peasant population of Guarromán. It was supported by an innovative agriculture of crops under shelter, and to an industrial and service projection around the old royal road, now the National IV highway of Andalusia.