The municipality of The Castle of the Guards is located in the northwest end of the county of Seville, in the Sierra North first estribaciones. Very related he/she meets this municipality with the areas of The Andévalo and the Sierra Onubense, when being located in the road that communicates the capital hispalense with these areas, very bound traditionally to the county of Seville, given the proximity and access easiness to the same one, especially if it is compared with the traditional disconnect of this area with the capital hispalense.
The population of the municipality ascended 1.800 inhabitants in 1.996 that are distributed among fourteen population entities, thirteen more villages the village of The Castle. These villages are: The Alcornocosa, Planing, Archidona, Stream of the Silver, the Gorse, the Cañadillas, the Cañuelo, the Cortecillas, Mines of the Castle of the Guards, the Pedrosillo, the Peralejo, Peroamigo and Valdeflores. Of all they highlight for their size, Stream of the Silver and Mines of the Castle of the Guards, with more than 200 and 160 housings, respectively.
The dolmens, the goldwork and another type of vestiges document the hypothesis that points out the existence of prehistoric residents in these places. From remote times the mineral wealth were exploited, like it seems that it happened to the tartesios in their copper search and lead. The mining inheritance passed the Phoenicians and Roman who they transformed the area into an essential center of the regional economy and they worried about designing routes for the transport and the communications among this place, Huelva and River I Tint.
In times of the Arab, what today is the Castle of the Guards stood out as inhabited nucleus and strategic location; in the town there were a mosque, cemetery and other Islamic facilities that you/they reveal its prestige. In 1.247, the conquest Fernando III and it commended it to the City council of Seville, with what was free of dominions until their emancipation at the end of the XVII century.
Three elements have configured along the time the urban structure of the village. On one side, the Castle, to the heat of which originates the urban nucleus and that he/she goes extending progressively toward the east. A second element, they are the diverse roads and highways that arise of the urban nucleus and that they have served from support to the different stages of growth and, lastly, the uneven topography that he/she has forced to some adapted expansions to the relief with that that the urban plot, presents a similar complex structure to the other towns mountain Andalusianses.
Besides the megalithic dolmens, the ceramic and prehistoric jewels, the Arab cemetery, the castle and other many remains stored by the time, this town exhibits other artistic and monumental contents. The most representative building is Saint John the Baptist Parochial Church. The primitive church, probably Mudejar, possesses elements of the advanced Renaissance period although the previous events to the civil war, caused important losses. They are also of pointing out the Source Water trough and the peculiar and beautiful square of bulls.
