A town of the Alto Vinalopó, the second-largest municipal territory in the province, with Andalusi roots (Bilyāna) beneath its castle of La Atalaya.
1,088 ha of vines in 1775; ~9,000 ha in the late 19th century; cooperative 1961A thousand hectares of vines in the Villena of 1775
Villena has stood for centuries on the border between Castile and Valencia, and its countryside has long combined cereals, olives and dry-farmed vines. In 1775 vineyards already covered some 1,088 hectares, and its wine was sold in Murcia and Madrid, shipped from Cartagena and Alicante to France and the Americas, or distilled into aguardiente. With the disentailment of church lands and the railway, the vineyard soared to some 9,000 hectares by the end of the 19th century, before phylloxera cut it back. In 1961 the small growers joined together in the Nuestra Señora de las Virtudes cooperative, which today keeps its fondillón in old underground tanks, and the 21st century brought estates such as Sierra Salinas (2006) and La Serrata. The 1775 figures are a historical fact, not a legend.
Alive today: More than 4,000 ha of vineyard (2003), the Bodega Cooperativa Las Virtudes (since 1961) with its fondillón, and wineries such as Sierra Salinas, Francisco Gómez and Casa Balaguer.