Aroche

Aroche occupies a defensible hill above the Sierra de Aroche, with the Chanza and Peramora streams running through a rugged borderland. Below the town lay the Roman city of Arucci Turobriga, founded under Augustus and largely abandoned after the third century. The higher settlement survived and later became the seat of the regional castle.

The Almohads built Aroche’s castle in the twelfth century under Abu Yaqub Yusuf. During the Christian conquest of the thirteenth century, the Hospital of Saint John and Portuguese forces entered the district. Portugal held Aroche by 1251, and Afonso III granted it a municipal charter in 1255. The Treaty of Badajoz in 1267 transferred the town to Castile, but its position on the frontier kept it exposed to repeated conflict.

Aroche was a walled town by the fifteenth century and maintained a Jewish aljama. During the Portuguese Restoration War from 1640 to 1668, its fortifications and roughly three hundred soldiers guarded the route toward Seville. Raids, displacement, and plague reduced the population, especially in 1649. From the mid-eighteenth century, the calmer frontier permitted demographic recovery, expansion of farming, and greater use of pasture on the surrounding hills.