History of Lupión
Like most of Andalusia, Lupión has been populated by a huge range of civilisations throughout history. Its strategic location on top of a plateau probably encouraged settlements, whilst it also served as the only natural route into the Despeñaperros passage. The agricultural and mineral wealth of the area would have been quickly apparent to passing communities; oil, cereals, wool, silver, copper and lead were all exported to Rome.
The pleasant surroundings of Lupión are sure to have attracted inhabitation as early as the Palaeolithic era. It was a place of abundant water, pastures and numerous wolves; indeed the Latin ‘lupus’ for wolf is likely to have been the origin of the town’s primitive Roman name of “Luparia”.
In the heyday of the Roman Cástulo, Lupión is mentioned for the first time as a “residential area and expansion of those inhabitants”. Of the passage of the Visigoths, it has been written that “they fell on everything that smelled of Rome”, resulting in Cástulo being completely destroyed by looting.
The Arab invasion began and turned Baeza into the main urban nucleus. It was detrimental to Cástulo, who did not want to take advantage of its infrastructure due to the deterioration caused by the Visigoths and because it was not of strategic interest to them. Once the territorial unit of Baeza was already defined, Lupión and most of the surrounding towns fell immediately under its jurisdiction.
On August 14, 1795, King Carlos IV, exempted, removed and freed the aforementioned Lupión from the guardianship of the City of Baeza, making it a town in its own right. The tranquility of Lupión, with its villazgo and rich territory, lasted until 1813, the date on which Torreblascopedro asked Lupión for its independence, dilating the request until 1871, when it separated from the municipality of Lupión.
As a consequence of the so-called “Plan of Works, Colonization, Industrialization and Electrification of the province of Jaén”, approved by means of the Law of July 17, 1953, Guadalimar arose, a district built by the Ministries of Public Works and Agriculture between 1954 and 1958, in the municipality of Lupión. It was inaugurated by General Franco himself in 1961, originally called Guadalimar del Caudillo. Since then, it has been part of the municipality, having been repopulated by half a thousand inhabitants belonging to families from Lupión, Begíjar, Baeza, Ibros, Bélmez de la Moraleda, Pontones and other neighbouring towns.