History

An AREA and was located in the same place that Villaricos is now. In the surrounding AREA a series of villages sprang up that worked the land in large estates.
In Al-Andalus times, the unsafeness of the coast and the decline in the mining activity made it advisable to move to a safer AREA inland in the XIII century, to Holy Spirità ´s Hill (Cerro del Espíritu Santo) where a hamlet already existed. From that moment it became the most eastern village of the Kingdom of Granada and was on the border with Lorca.
The Christian conquest took place in 1488. In the village an army camp was established for the Christian armies. As it was a strategic zone, the Catholic Monarchs played safe and moved all the Moslems inland and repopulated the village with soldiers. It remained a village without owner, dependent on the Crown and it was conceded its Municipal charters and privileges in 1494. The first Christian mayor was Captain Garcilaso de la Vega.
In the year 1518 an earthquake razed it completely and two years later it was rebuilt in the place it cuurrently occupies, by order of Carlos V, as a walled square in a rectangular shape, the central fortress of which was the Parish church.
The Moorish rebellion of 1568, occurred in the whole AREA. As there were no Moors in Vera it was not affected at the beginning. In September 1569 a siege by the Moors took place under the orders of Aben Humeya with the aim of dominating a large AREA of coastal territory and establishing communications with the north of Africa. The siege finished with the news of the proximity of an army on its way from Lorca.
The Society of Friends of the Country of Vera (La Sociedad de Amigos del País de Vera) was the second in Andalusia to ask for the approval of its statutes in June 1776. The economic and demographic progress of this period is reflected in the urban development of the village.
The XIX century was characterized by a series of important events such as the support of the Constitution of 1812 during the Liberal Government of 1820 to 1823 and the creation of an Urban Militia in charge of defending the values of the Constitution. The discovery of an argentiferous seam in the gully El Jaroso de Sierra Almagrera relaunched the economy of the village of Vera. At the end of the century the definitive municipal AREA which we know today was formed.
The crisis in the mining and the decline in traditional agriculture brought with it a crisis that has lasted since the beginning of the XX century. This was exacerbated by the emigration of t