Albacete History

As all big towns, Albacete started off as a very small village, and the oldest information about it goes back to 1241, when it was taken by Christian troops .Albacete is only heard of again during the fourteenth century when the famous writer Juan Manuel, duke of Penafiel is lord of this region and it starts to develop and increase it’s population . During the following century Albacete is granted the right to hold a market once a week. Later, during the revolts of the comuneros, around 1520, Albacete supported the Emperor Charles V, who in return, granted the town to his wife the empress Isabella. It’s at that time that the work on the church of San Juan bautista is begun.

What helped Albacete in becoming an important town rather than staying a small village was it’s strategic positioning between Madrid, only 258km away and the eastern coast. Albacete becomes a rich agricultural town and in 1710 Philip V grants permission for an annual cattle fair. In 1855, the railway reaches Albacete, it’s an important stop on the Madrid-Alicante route.

The town of Albacete’s population doubles during the 19th century form 10,000 to 21,000 inhabitants, and then triples again in between 1900 and the end of Spanish Civil war so 1939.Also alot of public works date from around that time. The first volume of Peter Weiss’ novel The Aesthetics of Resistance takes place in Albacete’s hospital “Cueva la Potita”, during the civil war. Albacete has become one of Spains’s most important towns thanks to the flourish of it’s economy and the consolidation of the Albacete university.