Thomas F. Reese

Las Nuevas Poblaciones de Sierra Morena y Andalucía: Reforma agraria, repoblación, y urbanismo en la España rural del siglo XVIII Rústica, 2022

This book studies a series of 32 towns created by Carlos III in southern Spain. Such creation is due to an illustrated project prepared by the Count of Aranda, president of the Council of Castilla, and entrusted to the Lima superintendent Pablo de Olavide. The initiative sought to implement a new social organization, for which a charter of its own was drawn up for the foundations that regulated aspects of the economic and social life of the more than 6,000 settlers from Alsace, Bavaria, Switzerland and Savoy. These towns were built over 37 months of intensive work, between February 26, 1767 and April 11, 1770; erected on desolate and largely uninhabited land along the main routes between Madrid and Cádiz, and between Valencia and Cádiz.

The objective of these populations was also to protect the main roads, where frequent attacks by bandits took place, as well as to increase grain supplies in Madrid, since the Esquilache Mutiny of 1766 in the capital persuaded the Crown of the need to increase production. Two groups of populations were established: the New Populations of Sierra Morena, between Despeñaperros and Bailén, and those of Andalusia, between Córdoba and Carmona. In total they housed 1,499 houses for 1,535 families and 6,585 settlers, who planted 14,289 bushels of grain, 97,791 olive trees, 525,701 vines and 2,222 fig trees. In 1775, the number of populations had increased to 41, and in 1795, there were already more than 50.