Cañete

Cañete lies in the mountainous Serranía of Cuenca. A castle crowns the ridge above the town, and walls of Islamic origin enclose its streets. Later lords reinforced the castle and adapted its defences to firearms, while the town's arcaded main square took shape in the fifteenth century.

At the end of that century Cañete became a marquisate under the Hurtado de Mendoza family. Livestock raising was important across the Cuenca mountains in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and access to pasture could bring disputes with neighbouring districts. The walls, market square and surrounding grazing country reflect a town tied to both seigneurial authority and rural production.