HISTORY OF CAZALILLA
There is documented proof of human presence in Cazalilla dating as far back as the Copper Age (third millennium BC), indicated through both the ceramics of this period collected in its urban area and by the settlement of the Cerro de la Coronilla in the fortified farmhouse of La Atalaya, located on a hill with extensive surrounding views. Around the second millennium, this settlement was abandoned. It was reoccupied at the end of the sixth century BC, in the oldest stage of Iberian culture.
In Roman times, a scattered settlement occupied the area, and a tombstone has been discovered dating to the Arab era, with the epitaph of an individual named Ahmad b. Mauro or Mawru who died in 885. Although the tombstone confirms the existence of Cazalilla in Muslim times, the researchers, after analysis of the name Mauro or Mawru, believe that the town already existed in Visigothic times, since the appellation could be of Latin root and comes from ‘Muwallad’ (Christian converted to Islam).
From the times of the Castilian conquest, the name of Caztalliella appears in the delimitation of terms between Jaén and Martos, a term that has been identified with the current Cazalilla. In the Synod of 1311 it appears as one of the parishes of the Archpriesthood of Jaén.
In the second half of the fifteenth century, during the War of the Castilian Succession between the nobility and King Enrique IV, Cazalilla is named on various occasions in relation to its castle. One of the most significant events was that of December 23, 1471, when Fernando de Acuña, son of the Count of Buendía, nephew of the Archbishop of Toledo, was arrested by the Mayor of the castle, Diego de Frías, and handed over to Constable Iranzo. The only remnant of this castle is the drawing made by Ximena Jurado in the seventeenth century.
During the Modern Age, the locality followed the guidelines of the rest of the province; socioeconomic recovery in the fifteenth century and depression in the sixteenth and part of the eighteenth. The town obtained its jurisdictional segregation from the city of Jaén in the seventeenth century.