History - Puente de Génave
The town has very different origins and history than the rest of the province. The decision was made to build a road that linked Jaén with Albacete and as part of it, a bridge, the “new bridge”, was completed in 1889. This signified the birth of the town and it was accompanied by immense growth, such that in less than 50 years, it was already a municipality, thus becoming the only town in Jaén of the twentieth century.
However, there are testimonies that the area was inhabited in other times. The first ones date back to the Paleolithic on the terraces of the Guadalimar River and on Migallejo Hill. From the Bronze Age, several settlements have been found on easily defended hills: Las Dos Hermanas, Guru, etc... There are also Roman traces of the “old bridge”, which was built on the existing communication route between Cástulo (Linares) and the Levante area. Traces have also remained of the Islamic occupation, specifically the remains of a tower-fortress, known as “Las Torres”.
After the Christian conquest, along with the rest of the lands of Segura del Alfoz, the town became part of the Order of Santiago. In the Topographical Relations of Felipe II carried out in 1575, the existence of a flour mill next to the “old bridge” is mentioned, an industry that proliferated over time. In the mid-nineteenth century, the urban core was made up of a series of isolated farmhouses: Pedro Nares, the aforementioned mill, Las Ánimas and La Mina.
From the beginning of the twentieth century, the town grew thanks to a new road and the services that it demanded, the rise of agriculture thanks to the massive clearing of land and public works such as the railway line Baeza-Utiel, Guadalmena Reservoir and the RENFE sawmill. These works were purely temporary and did not create stable employment, so in the 1960s the trend was dramatically reversed, with periods of real population reductions that only stabilised in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, Puente de Génave took off as a municipality. The considerable urban expansion, especially in the residential area of La Vicaría, has caused the population of the municipality to grow year after year. The multiple promotions of officially protected housing allow young people and those families with the lowest incomes to access this essential good. In recent years, there have been many public and private services that have improved the quality of life of the locals of the town.