Pinoso

Cities - Villages

The origin of Pinoso is uncertain, since the settlements happened to be Iberian, Roman, Muslim towns, etc. The traces of its history can be traced in the deposits, while the recent one still appears in many corners. The oldest remains date from the Upper Paleolithic, and in the Bronze Age there would appear some stable settlements, of which remains have been found in several parts of the municipality. During the Roman domination the invaders showed their predilection for this land, in which agriculture provided an abundance of food, such as wines and oils, highlighting the location of four villas. On the contrary, there are few remains of the Muslim period, when Pinoso was a group of scattered farmhouses. Following the Treaty of Almizra (1244), the area became part of the Crown of Castile (integrated into the Manor of Villena), until in 1296, Jaime II annexed the region to the Crown of Aragon. Chroniclers of the time report that this frontier was visited by the Castilian and Aragonese nobility, because at that time it was an ideal hunting area, with a high hunting value, being largely depopulated to the efforts of agricultural and human colonization initiated in the eighteenth century. At that time it received the name of "Houses of Coast", appearing in numerous maps of the time. In 1773 it began to be known as Pinoso, at a time when it increased its population notably. Precisely because of the lack of capacity, in 1739 the church was built in the place where there was an old hermitage, being dedicated to Saint Peter the Apostle. Until its segregation, as early as the 19th century, Pinoso was part of the domains of the Duchy of Híjar, and under the protection of the town of Monóvar, on which it depended administratively as a district.