| The first evidence of the settlement of Yecla dates back to 5000 BC and there seems to be an unbroken chain of human habitation that extends through the Bronze Age etc. Eventually, the ancient Romans moved in and exploited the viniculture. Comparatively little is known about the place until the building of an eleventh-century fortress and the first mention of the name of the place …originally "Yakka" (oddly enough this isn't an Arab word and is probably pre-Roman).
By the mid thirteenth century Yecla was part of an administrative area known as 'Castille' and this included Villena, Sax and Caudete. This all changed in the mid fifteenth-century when the town was part of an alliance that stood against the dominance of nearby Villena. By 1488 the place was supplying wagons and men for a war as far away as Granada.
By 1530 the Franciscans moved in, built a church and were largely responsible for saving the place from the ravages of plague. More church building activity followed. Due to one "Adrés of the Rose" (1554-1624), a charismatic figure who went on the be made a saint, Yecla's popularity (and population) grew.
The War of Succession brings an end to Yecla's apparent poverty and a period decadence gets started around the beginning of the seventeenth century. Two blokes from this century rate highly with historians, Martín Soriano Zaplana, Zaplana (local hero manager of fiestas) and Martín Muñoz Salcedo, a bandit who seems to be some sort of Robin Hood.
Winemaking seems to have been the main industry, right up to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the area's carpenters and coopers turned their hand to making furniture and, since the sixties, Yecla's furniture industry has boomed. These days, when you drive into Yecla, you pass hundreds of furniture factories, shops and warehouses. I would imagine it to be a good place to go to buy furniture! |
