History of Cantillana

The village of Cantillana is located 31 kilometers to the northwest of the capital hispalense, occupying the terrace formed by the river Guadalquivir in its fork point with the Viar. The Sierra Moraine last foothills appears to backs of the town, after the district of the Vega to the one that belongs this municipal term.

The total population of the municipality of Cantillana ascended 8.930 inhabitants in 1.996. In the municipality, they are located, besides the main nucleus, the entities of population of the Station of Railroad and the villages of Highway of Brenes, The Speck and The Barns.

In this municipal term of Cantillana where you/they have been archaeological vestiges corresponding to cultures calcolítics, the versions on the population's origin, are distributed among those who mention to the Phoenicians and those that opt for a supposedly Celtic foundation. In times of the Romans Ilipa called herself Naeva, being municipality in which the neighbors showed the Roman citizenship. Of the old Latin city remains existed, mainly of hydraulic character, and sepulchral tablets, among other discoveries.

The vitality that he/she enjoyed under the colonization of the Straight one one came below during the Islamic time; it lost their previous splendor and the town decayed in all the senses, besides disappearing its main buildings. On the contrary, what was built in those times was a Castle smaller than brick and cement, in what today is the Hill of the Church.

When the king Fernando III conquered the village in 1.247 he/she gave it to the archbishop from Seville, Don Remondo who shared it there with the Cathedral Town council for 1.285 with posteriority. In 1.547, the king Felipe II Cantillana recovered for the Crown, selling it then to the Italian merchant Vicentelo of Leca "The Corsican" one that constituted the County of Cantillana, continuing as count dominion until the XIX century in that he/she became independent as city council.

The location of the village, in a first terrace in the fork of the rivers Viar and Guadalquivir, it has determined, so much the historical evolution of the same one, as their current urban structure. This way, the growth of the city has left taking place in form of circular sectors toward the north of a nucleus very reduced native around the Hill of the Church and that, it probably coincides with the walled enclosure of Arab time. A first expansion takes place after the Reconquest, being surrounded the previous enclosure by its sides north, this and west. A third expansion phase extends until the voyage of the regional district road 431 and he/she takes place until the first third of this century, being included in its environment the square of bulls and the market of supplies. Next to this sector and during the same time, a lineal growth takes place, uniting to the town with the cemetery and the Church of Our Mrs. of the Asunción. A last phase of growth takes place from the end of the years 40 until the present time, being continued the expansion toward the north with quarters like The Source, The Esperanza and the Sermons.

The current urban plot, fruit of the described evolution, presents an anarchical structure, when leaving superimposing the different growths with new layouts of the voyages of the highways that cross the nucleus.

Besides the remains of the Roman fortified construction, even visible near the parochial church, and other archaeological vestiges of diverse importance, the monumental rampart of Cantillana is adjusted to the religious architecture, with its hermitage and its two churches.

The Church of Our Mrs. of the Asunción, in one of the ends of the town, it dates in the beginnings of their construction of 1.619. Of plant basilical it is San Bartolomé's Church, of the XV century, constituted by three ships separated by brick columns that get off pointed arches. Lastly, the Hermitage of Our Mrs. of the Soledad it dates of the XVIII century.