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Town of Aldeaquemada (Andalusia, Spain)

Jaen Province

2:3
image from Jaenpedia, uncredited, 15 Jul 2009
N.B.: reconstructed image, no original seen

Introduction
Description

See also:

Introduction

The municipality of Aldeaquemada (552 inhabitants in 2008; 12,100 ha) is located in the heart of the Sierra Morena, 100 km north-east of Jaén.

Aldeaquemada (lit. "The Burned Village") is locally said to have been founded after the village of Aldehuela had been suppressed by a blaze; however, D. Carlos Sánchez-Batalla Martínez, the official chronicler of Aldeaquemada, has produced evidence that the name of the village predated the event.

The rock paintings of Aldeaquemada, the most important in Andalusia, have been listed in 1998 on the UNESCO World Heritage List, with the following notice: "Aldeaquemada has a series of cave paintings, classified as 'schematic', in various parts of the region. There are a series of paintings depicting humans, hunting scenes and animals, while others are purely symbolic. One of the area's most representative works is the 'Tabla de Pochico' (Pochico Panel), which lies in Cimbarra waterfall Nature Park. UNESCO declared a total of 19 archaeological Levantine cave painting sites as World Heritage, including the 'Tabla de Pochico'. " The paintings of the Tabla de Pochico were studied and published by Juan Cabré ("Arte rupestre de España," 1915; "Las pinturas rupestres d’Aldeaquemada," 1917). Abbot Breuil reproduced Cabré's drawings in "Les peintures rupestres schématiques de la péninsule ibérique: Sierra Morena, Vol. III" (1933). Recently reanalyzed by Manuel Gabriel López Payer and Miguel Soria Lerma ("," 1988), the paintings are made of three different panels with zoomorphic (goats, deers), anthropomorphic and schematic figures.

Aldeaquemada was part of the resettlement plan of the Sierra Morena set up by Charles III at the end of the 18th century. In 1767, D. Gaspar de Thürriegel was commissioned to settle 6,000 Catholic (French, German and Flemish) colonists in the Sierra Morena; the colonists were expected to develop agriculture and to take care of the Royal Road linking Madrid to Cádiz via the recently open Pass of Despeñaperros. An utopic, rural society scattered among different villages was expected to live from agriculture. The Dehesa [Pastures] de Aldeaquemada were "purchased" by the King from the Duke of los Benavides, de Santisteban del Puerto to establish one of the colonies.

Source: Municipal website

Ivan Sache, 15 Jul 2009

Description

The flag and arms of Aldeaquemada were approved by the Municipal Council on 24 February 2005 and submitted on 7 March 2005 to the General Directorate of Local Administration, which confirmed them by Decree on 28 March 2005, published in the Andalusian official gazette (Boletín Oficial de la Junta de Andalucía, BOJA) No. 67 on 7 April 2005.

The relevant parts of the Decree are the following:

Coat of arms: Argent an arm proper issuant from sinister holding in the palm a flame gules and or. A border argent, with a garland of arbutus vert. Spanish- framed shield surmounted with a Royal crown closed [described in great detail].

Flag: Rectangular flag with the background arbutus red. A yellow stripe, crossing the whole flag from the upper left to the lower right corner. In the middle, overall, the municipal shield.

The symbols should be registered on the Andalusian Register of Local Entities, with their official written description and graphics (as originally submitted, but unfortunately not appended to the Decree).

Source: BOJA No. 67, pp. 43-44, 07 Apr 2005

Ivan Sache, 15 Jul 2009