The Christian Lorca

During the Christian repopulation, the lands, the houses of Lorca and its farmhouses were distributed between the populations basically militant. It did not remain anything of the Moslem organization, to exception of the urban sketch and of the defences and walls. The more evident form to establish a new model of civilization was to represent it with an image. That was the reason for the construction of a great tower that culminated the King's palace, in the manner of the homage tower of Christians. We are talking about the Alphonsine tower.

From the Islamic period, they kept the system of irrigation for single showings in a series of continuous performances. But the abuses of some gentlemen propitiated that Alphonse X had to give an order in 1268 in order that everybody respect his decision.

The needs of living together and of regulation of the urban life made necessary a juridical basic arranging, that is a law, which established the municipality as the main element of government. In like manner, the villa was divided into parishes as circumscriptions. But the maintenance of the military danger in the contours of the villa and the difficulties because of the adverse climate, took the project of repopulation to a failure.

The frontier conditioned the development of the villa and its inhabitants. The field is depopulated to the end of the XIII century, remaining only some points strengthened rural, as Coy, Tébar or Chuecos, remaining the villa as the unique relating of population. Alfonso XI of Castilla tried a fourth repopulation that it also failed. The permanence of the constant military threat from the beginning made Lorca to be a place of possibilities.

The corona conceded privileges, as the exemption of certain taxes, to the inhabitants of Lorca because of the difficulties and in order to avoid its depopulation. The cultivated lands were abandoned and the implantation of the cattle closed to the business of the war. All this was complemented with the resources offered by the mountain such as the development of the apiculture or the chase.

The commercial activity was sunk after the conquest and it is transformed in trainings of smuggling with the Moslem sector.

It was an open society and the war was converted in a job with social reconnaissance. The lorquian person was a shepherd, a farmer, an apiculturist and a fighting person, who had his revenues in the cattle, the cultivation, the captivity or the occasional booty. That land of possibilities attracted the Jews. They were established in one of the wards of the fortress and dedicated basically to the work of sales with the Muslims.

In the first half of the XIV century, the separation between the water and the land took place. Due to the monetary needs for the defence, the town-council put in sale the water to which the inhabitants had a right to.
The remainder of owners of the payments of Albacete, Tercia and Sutullena decided to follow the example of the municipality, and began to sell the water that was not used to the best bidder in a public auction, or ‘alporchón’. The remainder of places of the orchard such as Alcalá, Altrital and Serrata, believing that their lands could remain uncultivated when selling the whole water that corresponded to them, were forbidden this commercialization. This was the reason why in some places the water is united to the land, but not in others.

Own: properties and incomes property of the municipal institution.

Payment: certain district of lands.