History - Santiago-Pontones
In the Cueva del Nacimiento in Fuente Segura (Pontones), one of the oldest human settlements in the province is documented. In 9250 BC a kinship community existed in this place. This first phase of settlement is superimposed on another in the Neolithic, which due to the ceramic material and lithic industry found, has been dated to the middle of the sixth millennium BC. A later phase belongs to the “Río Frío” shelter, which houses a collective tomb that has been dated between the end of the third millennium and second millennium BC. During the Iberian period this area was under the aegis of the great Iberian centre of Toya (Peal de Becerro). The cave paintings of Las Cuevas del Engarbo I and II are worth highlighting, along with those of the Río Frío Shelter and the Cañada de la Cruz Shelter, all included in the complex of Rock Art of the Spanish Mediterranean Arc in the World Heritage list carried out by UNESCO in Kyoto on December 2, 1998.
In the 1940s, some farmers found a magnificent treasure that was supposed to have been hidden by a silversmith around the first century BC. It is composed of pieces in the Tartessian-Iberian, Punic style, and others related to Etruscan, Celtic, etc; chronologically they go from the fourth to the second century BC. In total it is made up of more than one hundred objects and fragments.
From the Muslim era, throughout the municipality of Santiago-Pontones, there are vestiges of fortified enclosures, among which the Miller Castle stands out, of which four courses made of stone ashlars are preserved. These lands were conquered from the Arabs around the year 1247 by the Order of Santiago, becoming part of their domains. Although it is an area of prehistoric settlement, the nucleus of Santiago de la Espada was formed as such around the fifteenth century. Santiago was founded around the year 1525 with the name “El Hornillo”, although by the officers of the Encomienda de Santiago, it was called “Puebla de Santiago”.
The founders were ranchers, neighbours of Siles, as recorded in the Relations ordered by Felipe II. In 1570 La Puebla de Santiago was declared a village by King Felipe II, although dependent on the jurisdiction of Segura de la Sierra. It was later declared Villa de Fuero Real, a town that was ratified on November 30 1637 with the name “Villa de Santiago”. Just a century later, between 1770 and 1776, it would be given the name it currently holds: Santiago de la Espada.
Pontones, a hamlet of Segura de la Sierra called “El Pontón” in the times of Felipe II, as recorded in a questionnaire about towns and places ordered to be carried out by this monarch between 1574 and 1579, depended on the Villa de Segura until it achieved its independence in 1837 with a municipal area close to 200 square kilometres. Like Santiago, it was a village of Segura de la Sierra until the year 1837 when it achieved its independence, initially being called “Pontones de Segura”. It owes its name to the word pontones, that defines a bridge made of wood, constituting the supports of the bridge on which the beams and boards are placed, widely used by its inhabitants since ancient times due to its location along the Segura River.
As from 1580, labour, legal and economic activities were regulated by the Ordinances of the Common of Segura and later also forming part of the Maritime Province. In 1975, the municipalities of Pontones and Santiago de la Espada merged, forming the current municipality of Santiago-Pontones. Its entire territory is included in the different declarations of protection and conservation that reached the Sierra de Segura starting in the 1960s; National Reserve on July 21, 1960, declared by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve on June 30, 1983, Natural Park on February 5, 1986 and finally a special protection area for birds by the EEC in 1988 in application of the directive No. 79/409. With all this, it is not difficult to imagine the value, both in number and variety, of the animal and plant species that live in perfect symbiosis in this natural sanctuary.