In 1281, when Serpa and all the lands on the Left side of the Guadiana River were still under the domain of Castile, Afonso X established the demarcation of the county, to better populate it, and gave it the first charter, that of Seville. After a century of military and diplomatic adventures, with the Christian Reconquest of the Alentejo, Serpa received a new charter from King Dinis in 1295.
In the 16th century Serpa was one of the most important towns in the Alentejo and the kingdom itself, whose development was based on cereal and livestock farming, but also on powerful craftsmanship, focused on trade, and a very close alliance with the king. In the following century, Serpa almost doubled its population, which is in line with the general evolution of the country. In fact, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the frontier lands, the interior, are very far from desertification as the frontier does not yet stop the connections between Portugal and Spain.
In 1674, the prince regent, future king D. Pedro II, bestowed upon the town the title and privileges of “Vila NotĆ”vel” (Remarkable Town), justified by the number of inhabitants – more than one thousand five hundred -, by the nobility of the people, with many distinguished men having emerged from it, both in letters and in arms, and by the strategic military position it occupied, near the border line, on occasions of war. This last situation, in fact, made the county particularly affected by the insecurity and destruction caused progressively by the Restoration wars of 1640/48, the War of Spanish Succession, between 1703 and 1713, and the Napoleonic invasions in 1801 and 1814.
In the middle of the 18th century, the county loses military preponderance and, unlike the rest of the country, its population does not increase, perhaps because of the numerous crisis situations registered due to bad agricultural years. At the end of the 18th century the county is closer to the 17th than to the 19th century. The old economic regime remains and with it the social inequalities. The fertile lands of the county are in the hands of large landowners, who control the life of the municipality, and there is a growing mass of peasants subject to cyclical labor crises and a miserable subsistence situation.
At the dawn of the Enlightenment, the country in general, and Serpa and its region in particular, are very far from the “Light” that the men of that time spoke so much about. Ironically, one of them, Abbot Correia da Serra, was born in Serpa in 1751.
In the following centuries there was an increasing concentration of properties in the hands of the great lords, who, with few exceptions, applied their profits outside the region.
During the second half of the 19th century, the multiplication of clearings, not only of good lands but also of unproductive lands, which were called galegas, and then, in the 1930’s and 40’s of the 20th century, the famous wheat campaign, which extended its cultivation even to vast shale regions, had disastrous consequences.
They destabilized the fragile productive system based on the complementary nature of livestock farming with the gathering activities and the intense cultivation of vegetable gardens, and did not solve the problem of an economy that served the interests of those who lived outside the Alentejo. Perhaps here lies the true dimension of the isolation that affects the region.
Because the White houses in the old town the city will be called also white city. The first traces of human settlement date back to 3000 years before Christ.
Serpa is definitely a city that deserves a visit with its over 5000 years of history from the medieval time, the Muslim takeover, the Spanish-Portuguese wars.
Text & Photos: Rainer Georgius
Nature & Culture 
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