| Cáceres | |
| Settlement Type: | Municipality |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | Spain |
| Subdivision Type1: | Autonomous community |
| Subdivision Name1: | Extremadura |
| Subdivision Type2: | Province |
| Subdivision Name2: | Cáceres |
| Subdivision Type4: | Judicial district |
| Subdivision Name4: | Cáceres |
| Coordinates: | 39.4833°N -28°W |
| Elevation M: | 459 |
| Area Total Km2: | 1750.33 |
| Population Demonym: | Cacereños, -as |
| Population Density Km2: | auto |
| Timezone: | CET |
| Utc Offset: | +1 |
| Timezone Dst: | CEST |
| Utc Offset Dst: | +2 |
| Postal Code Type: | Postal code |
| Postal Code: | 10001-10005 |
| Area Code Type: | Dialing code |
| Leader Title: | Mayor |
| Leader Party: | PSOE |
Cáceres ([1] pronounced as /es/) is a city and Spanish municipality located in the center of the autonomous community of Extremadura.[2] It is the capital and most populated municipality of the province of Cáceres and houses the headquarters of the Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura.[3]
The municipality has a land area of 1750.33km2, the largest in Spain. According to official INE data for 2021, the municipality had a population of 95,418 inhabitants, of which 94,326 lived in the city itself.[4] Numerous inhabited places are scattered throughout the municipality, including castles and farmhouses with several centuries of history.[5] The medieval walled city was declared a World Heritage City by UNESCO in 1986.[6]
Since 2008 the city has been organized into four districts: Center-Old Town, North, West and South; a fifth district, Pedanías, covers the non-urban part of the term.[7] [8] The actual municipal population data varies significantly, fluctuating by more than 30,000 people primarily related to educational centers[9] such as the Cáceres Campus of the University of Extremadura[10] or the CEFOT-1 of the Army.[11] The city usually empties in summer, when many residents return to their towns of origin.[12] [13] Cáceres lies at the feet of the Sierra de la Mosca,[14] a modest hill range. It is part of the Vía de la Plata ("Silver Route") path of the Camino de Santiago that crosses the west of the Iberian Peninsula in a north–south direction.
The Universidad de Extremadura, and two astronomical observatories are situated in Cáceres. Today, the headquarters of the university as well as several regional government departments are found in Cáceres. The city is also a seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Coria-Cáceres.
No consensus has been reached among historians regarding the etymology of Cáceres, some considering its origin as Roman and others as Arabic. Among philologists the consensus is that it is Latin nomenclature deformed by Arabic, until finally adapting to the definitive Christian name, as happened with at least half of all place names of ancient origin in the southern Iberian Peninsula.[15] [16] [17] [18]
Regarding its possible Roman origin, two known Latin names could have evolved into the current "Cáceres." One would come from the colony "Norba Caesarina" (founded in 34 BC), "Norba" in honor of the hometown of Gaius Norbanus Flaccus, the Roman general who founded the town, and "Caesarina" in memory of Julius Caesar. The other name is "Castra Caecilia," given by the consul Quinto Cecilio Metelo Pío to one of the military camps near the colony. With any of these toponyms based on "castra" ("camp"), its ablative "castris," which means "in the camp", could have provided the original form of the current "Cáceres."[19]
Historians have debated which of these is the true origin; until the 19th century it was mistakenly thought that Norba Caesarina was the neighboring town of Alcántara, while it was believed that the walled enclosure of Cáceres was Castra Caecilia.
Due to the documentary obscurity of the Visigoth period, it is not clear by what name Caceres was known when the Muslims arrived here. Documents from the 3rd and 4th Centuries indicate that the name of the area had been shortened in the colloquial form "Castris."
The Ravenna Cosmography fixes the use of "Castris" in the 4th century, however, the following mentions of the locality reappear in Muslim texts:
• The Baghdadi geographer Ibn Hawqal located a locality called "ḥiṣn Qāṣras" in this place.
• A century and a half later, Al-Idrisi from Ceuta reiterates this name.
• A third source from the end of the Muslim period, written in the late 12th century or early 13th century by Yaqut, suggests that it was renamed "Qāṣr As."
In any case, sources from the time are scarce, since the Muslims never considered Cáceres as an important town beyond its use as a military fortification.
Both the transliteration of the Arabic toponym into the Latin alphabet and the creation of a name in the Romance languages were disparate. In some ancient writings and medieval documents various names appear, such as:
• "Caceres" in a bull of 1168 by Pope Alexander III, awarding the territory to the diocese of Coria in the first Leonese conquest;
• "Castes" in a Castilian document from 1171 by King Alfonso VIII, through which he recognized the Fratres of Cáceres as owners of the land;
• "Carceres" in the mandate of Alfonso IX of León dated in the year 1222 (however, the same king adopts the form "Caceres" in another document of the same year signed during the siege);
• «Canceres» written the document of 1229 through which Alfonso IX gave concessions to the Order of Santiago.
Visitors can see remains from Prehistoric, medieval times, the Roman occupation, Moorish occupation and the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. Cáceres has four main areas to be explored: the historical quarter, the Jewish quarter, the modern center, and the outskirts.[20]
There have been settlements near Cáceres since prehistoric times. Evidence of this can be found in the caves of Maltravieso and El Conejar.[21] The Maltravieso Cave (discovered in 1956 by the academic and official chronicler of Cáceres Carlos Callejo) contains hundreds of paintings, including the world's oldest known cave painting, a red hand stencil older than 67,000 years. This is 20,000 years before the known arrival of Homo sapiens to Europe and therefore is believed to have been made by Neanderthals.[22] These paintings date to several of the Upper Paleolithic periods.
In the nearby El Conejar cave, ceramics and lithic utensils have been found that date the occupation of the cave to the Ancient Neolithic (VI-V millennium BC); the possibility that the cave was occupied during the Epipaleolithic period should not be ruled out. Location of trepanned skulls and decorated ceramics suggest that the Maltravieso cave was also occupied during the Bronze Age.[23] [24]
The city was founded by the Romans in 25 BCE. Cáceres as a city was founded as Castra Caecilia by Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius and started to gain importance as a strategic city under Roman occupation. Remains found in the city suggest that it was a thriving center as early as 25 BCE. Some remains of the first city walls built by the Romans in the 3rd and 4th centuries still exist, including one gateway, the Arco de Cristo.
During the 1st century BCE the Romans settled in camps (Castra Cecilia and Castra Servilia) permanently around the hill where the Norba Caesarina colony would be located next to the important communications route that would later be known as Vía de la Plata.
The old municipality of Aldea Moret, 2 km to the southwest, is currently a neighborhood of the same name integrated into the city, around which two Roman archaeological sites can be seen: Cuarto Roble and El Junquillo. The signposted Vía de la Plata can be traveled south of the city. An excavated section in Valdesalor, where the road crosses the Salor River through a recently restored medieval bridge, occupies the place of an ancient Roman bridge, now lost.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city was occupied by the Visigoths, until the Arabs conquered Cáceres in the 8th century. The city spent the next few centuries mostly under Arab rule, although power alternated several times between Moors and Christians. During this time, the Arabs rebuilt the city, including a wall, palaces, and various towers, including the Torre de Bujaco. Cáceres was reconquered by the Christians in the 13th century (1229).
During this period the city had an important Jewish quarter: in the 15th century when the total population was 2,000, nearly 140 Jewish families lived in Cáceres. The Jewish population was expelled by Queen Isabel I (Isabella I) of Castile and Fernando II (Ferdinand II) of Aragon in 1492, but many remains of the Jewish presence of the period can still be seen today in the Barrio San Antonio.
Around the 5th century, the Visigoths devastated the Roman settlement, and until the 8th-9th century the city was not heard of again.During the first centuries of the "Reconquista" (Reconquest), it was the Muslims, from North Africa, who took advantage of the strategic place on which the primitive Roman colony was based as a military base to confront the Christian kingdoms of the north. Thus, in the year 1147 Abd al-Mumin refounded the city on the Hispano-Roman and Visigoth remains. The current name of Vía de la Plata comes from Arabic, the name of the Roman road that linked Astorga with Mérida (from the Arabic "balata" (road), from which the word "silver" was derived).[25]
The Christian Reconquest of Cáceres occurred in 1229, the result of a long process that from the second half of the 12th century to the beginning of the 13th century. During this period, which began in 1142 with the conquest of Coria, the Tagus River marked an unstable border between Christians to the north and Muslims to the south. The kingdom of Castile partly ignored the possibilities of conquering this area; attempts to incorporate Cáceres came from the kingdom of Portugal and the kingdom of León, which both wanted to expand their width in their southern expansions. The Portuguese Geraldo Sempavor conquered Cáceres in the mid-12th century in a campaign that began in 1165 and reached the entire center of present-day Extremadura, but an alliance between Ferdinand II of León and the Almohads gave the Leonese control of the town in 1170.[26]
The Almohads carried out an expedition in 1174 in which they managed to regain control of Cáceres. Except for an attempted siege in 1183, the Leonese did not approach the Muslim town again until the 13th century. After the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, the conquest of Alcántara took place in 1213, after which the Christians besieged Cáceres in 1218, 1222, 1223 and 1225, producing the definitive Reconquest on 23 April 1229. Although the conquest was led by Alfonso IX of León, becoming part of the Kingdom of León, the death of Alfonso IX in 1230 led to Cáceres becoming part of the Crown of Castile and León.
The privileges of the reconquered town were granted by Alfonso IX and configured Cáceres as a royal town directly dependent on the Leonese Crown with no local government other than its own council. Through this jurisdiction, the Crown reserved a notable portion of land between those of the Order of Santiago and those of the Order of Alcántara.[27]
Cáceres flourished during the Reconquista and the Discovery of the Americas, as influential Spanish families and nobles built homes and small palaces there, and many members of families from Extremadura participated in voyages to the Americas where they made their fortunes.
In the 15th century, the city suffered from internal disputes among the nobility. The Catholic Monarchs issued several ordinances and provisions to try to pacify the local nobles; The most notable was issued by Isabel I (Isabella I) in 1477, during her stay in the town on the occasion of the War of the Castilian Succession, whereby it was established that the twelve aldermen of the council would become perpetual. The prohibition of stately properties in this jurisdiction prevented the formation of a strong nobility, leaving the town governed by a mesocracy of agricultural knights.
The Old Town (Parte Antigua) still has its ancient walls; this part of town is also well known for its multitude of storks' nests. The walls contain a medieval town setting with no outward signs of modernity, which is why many television shows and films have been shot there.[28] [29]
Cáceres was declared a World Heritage City by UNESCO in 1986[6] because of the city's blend of Roman, Moorish, Northern Gothic and Italian Renaissance architecture. Thirty towers from the Islamic period still stand in Cáceres, of which the Torre del Bujaco is the most famous.
During the War of the Communities of Castile, Caceres joined the rebel ranks. On 15 April 1522, the monarch granted amnesty to the city, with the exception of the most committed community members.[30]
In 1653 the town of Cáceres, along with five other towns in the current autonomous community, acquired a joint vote in the Cortes of Castile, giving rise to the purchase of the vote to the province of Extremadura, which in 1822 would be divided into those of Cáceres and Badajoz. Cáceres was represented in the Cortes of Madrid from 1660 to 1664 as part of said joint vote.[31]
Until the 18th century, Cáceres was just another town among the many in Extremadura. In the Cadastre of Ensenada, carried out in Cáceres in 1753, it is indicated that only 1,698 families lived in the town itself. However, during the second half of the 18th century, the town began to grow, motivated by the arrival of both temporary and permanent foreign settlers, whose presence gave rise to the formation of a local bourgeoisie that until then did not exist due to the rural nature of the population. Starting in the mid-18th century, ranchers from the center of the peninsula, many of them from the Sierra de Cameros, began to settle in Extremadura, fleeing the crisis suffered by transhumance. Prominent textile merchants from Cameros and Catalonia also settled here.[32]
In 1790 a decisive event occurred in the history of Cáceres that made it evolve over time from a simple town to a city with regional importance: Charles IV established there the headquarters of the Royal Court of Extremadura, the highest judicial body of the region.[33] Numerous officials and professionals from very different places in Spain began to settle in the town, which increased the weight of the local bourgeoisie. At the beginning of the 19th century, merchant neighborhoods could already be distinguished in the Old Town extramuros (outside the walls), with their houses located in the Plaza Mayor and in several streets in its surroundings such as Barrionuevo, Empedrada, Parras, Pintores and Santo Domingo.
The judiciary was not the only public sector that provided urban character at that time: the defective division into provinces of the Crown of Castile caused many enlightened people to demand the division of Extremadura into two provinces, which benefited Cáceres by establishing itself as the provincial capital. In 1810, the French tried to create the prefecture of Cáceres during the Peninsular War, with limits similar to those of the current province. Ten years later and during the Liberal Triennium in 1822 the province of Cáceres was created with its capital in this town.
In the Spanish Civil War, the military forces of Cáceres supported the coup d'état of 1936. When the rebel forces freed the Falangist Luna, he mobilized about a thousand sympathizers in the city and began to issue orders to occupy the principal surrounding towns, as well as the capture of the main strategic points such as the border points with Portugal, ports, and bridges. The repression by the Francoists began immediately, with the assassination of the director of Union and Labor, Pedro Montero Rubio, and the mayor of Cáceres Antonio Canales González, among others, a total of more than 600 people shot, about 220 during Christmas 1937. The constitutional governor and mayor were imprisoned and replaced by soldiers; the first, Ignacio Mateos Guija, was shot dead by Falangists and four relatives were thrown into the Tagus River, and the business run by his father was illegally confiscated.[34]
The uprising in Cáceres facilitated General Francisco Franco's advance along the roads of Mérida and Badajoz. On 26 August 1936, General Franco arrived in Cáceres, where he established his headquarters before beginning the advance on Madrid. There he received his wife Carmen and his daughter, whom he had not seen since the day of the military coup d'état. Between 8 and 10 October 1936, and on the occasion of Franco's request for military aid to Hitler, The first Panzer I model battle tanks arrived at the Arguijuelas de Abajo and Arriba castles, which had arrived in Seville by boat. For several months, a training academy for armored vehicle drivers was established in the castles, directed by the German colonel Wilhelm von Thoma. Later the training academy was moved to Cubas de la Sagra, in the province of Madrid and its military equipment took part in combat near the Madrid fronts. The Cáceres airfield also had important air movements, from which the aircraft that attacked the Republican forces and the Condor Legion departed.[35]
One of the few reactions of the Republican forces was the bombing of the city on 23 July 1937. That day five Soviet twin-engine Tupolev aircraft under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jaume Mata Romeu, of the Air Force of the Spanish Republic, which had taken off from the Los Llanos de Albacete airfield, dropped 18 bombs, which affected various buildings (such as the Mayorazgo Palace), the food market, Santa María, the back of the Civil Guard barracks, the town hall, and Nido and Sancti Espíritu streets), causing 35 deaths and numerous injuries.[36]
See main article: Old Town of Cáceres. The walls contain a medieval town setting with no outward signs of modernity, which is why many television shows and films have been shot there, including scenes for Game of Thrones and the Spanish series Isabel.[37] [38] [39] The "Monumental City of Cáceres" was declared by the Council of Europe as the Third Monumental Complex of Europe in 1968 (after Prague and Tallinn) and World Heritage by Unesco in 1986. Cáceres also has other awards: Pomme d'Or to "Tourism Merit", awarded by the International Federation of Tourism Journalists and Writers in 1996; Les Etoiles d'Or du Jumelage, awarded by the European Commission in 1999; The Archival prize awarded to him by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Centers in 2004 and the Citizens 2008 Award granted by the Association of Radio and Digital Television Entities, with the collaboration of the Citizen Audiovisual Council for the support that the citizenship provided to The candidacy for the European Capital of Culture of 2016. Cáceres is also a member of the Roads Networks of Sefarad, of the Vía de la Plata, being chosen by the Autonomous Community as Cultural Capital of Extremadura Enclave 92, and together with the solidarity effort of The administrations, private companies, official entities and private citizens, aspired between 2003 and 2010 to be European Capital of Culture in the year 2016.
See main article: Old Town of Cáceres.
The following palaces and noble houses are located in the historic center:[40]
Several castles are located in the municipality of Cáceres:[41]
The city has more than 3,500 hotel beds and, with 660 668 visitors registered by the municipal tourist centers during 2009, it became the first tourist center in the region in number of visitors.[45] In 1996 Cáceres received the Pomme d'Or tourism award.[46]
Cáceres hosts several music festivals at different times of the year. The most crowded are the WOMAD, a world music festival held in the month of May, and the SonoraCC, dedicated to pop, rock and indie national.[52]
Several film festivals are held in Cáceres throughout the year, concentrated in the months of March and November.
The city of Cáceres is located in the province of Cáceres, in the Extremadura region of western central Spain. The city has a Hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa) which is tempered by its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. In winter the average temperature does not exceed 14°C maximum, reaching 8°C minimum, with some frost. In summer the average maximum temperature is 34°C and the average minimum is 19°C. Rainfall is abundant in the months of October, November, March, April and May, but very intermittent.[65]
The University of Extremadura (founded in 1973) has a campus in Cáceres.
The city is served by the Cáceres railway station, which serves around 100,000 passengers annually. Also, across the street is the bus terminal, with multiple buses daily to other cities.
Cáceres is situated close to the Autovía A-66 from Seville to Gijón.
The small streets in the historical centre have many small shops selling typical products. The convents sell homemade sweets and pastries. Typical wines from Extremadura are affordable, full-bodied reds. Local liqueurs include cherry liqueur from the nearby Jerte valley, or other original liqueurs such as chestnut and blackberry. Other produce in the Province include sheep's cheese (Torta del Casar, is not made of goat's milk, but with milk from merino sheep), fig cake, chestnuts, hams and other pork products, lamb, olive oil, and paprika (pimentón de la Vera).
Salt-cured ham and red wine are produced locally and are officially recognized by the Spanish government. Both goat's and sheep's cheese are produced by traditional methods and renowned throughout the country. Cáceres is also famous for its stews, roast meats (especially pork, lamb and game), fried breadcrumbs (migas), trout, pastries and honey.
Among others notable sport teams, Cáceres is home to association football team CP Cacereño who currently play in the Tercera División and the professional basketball teams Cáceres Basket, who play the Liga LEB Oro, and Club Baloncesto Al-Qazeres, who play the Liga Femenina. And Rugby Union Extremadura CAR Cáceres playing DHB, 2nd National división.