The villa of Gelves is located to the southwest of the capital, to little six kilometers of same and the their location and structure it comes determined by two essential elements in its configuration as they are, the Guadalquivir River and the Cornice of the Aljarafe. Between both, and forming one strip that extends of north to the south supported in the railcar from Seville to Coria of the River, extends its small village.
The total population of the municipality ascended in 1.996, to a total of 5,084 inhabitants.
The first foundation of the town, seems to come from turdetana time, due to the name of Gelduba, since, according to Vicente Garci'a de Diego, the words thus finished come from that civilization. At first, the Romans maintained this denomination although there are some historians who affirm that, with the colonization of the Straight one, the denomination was altered to stay as Vergentum or Iuli Genius. Of Latin villa it happened to be Arab farmhouse with the Gel-Bal name, in times in which the locality was centered in the agricultural operation, reason why, but that a population center, which existed was a set of houses scattered based on the necessities of such activity. After the Castilian conquest in 1.427, as previous operation to the taking of Seville, Gelves happened through diverse señoríos except one first and reduced time at which realenga was catalogued like villa. To the Ducado de Alba it belonged until century XIX, when the term established its constitutional city council.
The fear to the floods that the Guadalquivir caused on the one hand, and the necessity of proximity to the wealth and the possibilities of communication that offered the river, caused that the original nucleus of the villa was located in the same slope of the cornice of the Aljarafe, with a North linear structure - South in whose center the Parochial Church is located. The regulation of the channel, causes that the most recent expansions are developed in the direction of the river leaning in a new linear element as is the railcar Seville - Coria. This barrier is only surpassed at the recent times but (years 80) with the construction of the sport port and the residential constructions that have arisen to the heat from the same one.
Thus, the urban structure that presents/displays at the present time the urban nucleus of Gelves, responds previously to a supported linear structure in the three elements reviewed, the river, the cornice and the railcar, having itself produced the recent expansions but towards the north and the south. The superior part of the cornice of the Aljarafe has been developed by the inertia produced by the urbanization of Green Simón, in the neighboring municipality of Mairena of the Aljarafe, maintaining a city-planning and constructive tipología very similar to her.
In which one talks about to monuments and places of special interest, Gelves presents/displays its Church of Santa Maria de Gracia, builds barroca of the XVII. Also they are to emphasize two sources of century XVIII, the Property of Torrequemada and the one of Green Simón, made by Talavera. Although of recent invoice, it shows to special interest the monument dedicated to the bullfigther Jose Go'mez Ortega, Joselito the Rooster, whose memory the name of a seat and its native house have left.
