The continuous floods led to a new reestablishment of La Rinconada and an expansion that transformed it into a different place. At the end of the 19th century, following a terrible flood, there was a plan to relocate the town to the lands the Municipality still owned in the eastern dehesas, despite the great disentailment. However, Providence intervened, and instead of relocating, a new additional “settlement” was formed in those lands—the San José Area. Here, a vast number of people would find work and shelter in the following years.

In the early 20th century, people from Granada, Portugal, Almería, Córdoba, Badajóz, Saucejo, Castiblanco, and almost all the towns of Huelva and even Seville and Málaga packed their belongings and came to this town. The establishment of the railway, followed by sugar factories, irrigated land, and proper utilisation of fertile soil, provided sustenance for both the locals and newcomers. It was a matter of better distribution of the available resources. In terms of work, no one was more hospitable and supportive than the people from La Rinconada. When it came to capital, we—and newcomers—were demanding and outspoken, ensuring that property and wealth, derived from abundant water and fertile soil, served to improve the living standards of all inhabitants. This approach reflected our historical legacy and the example set by our founder King, who was canonised by consensus and treated all—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—equally. He fostered the first interethnic and multinational coexistence in the emerging Western world in Seville and its surroundings.

In the early 20th century, our economic level and public development improved, especially during the Primo de Rivera regime (1923-1930), thanks to the collective effort and the agricultural research labour made by the Count de Benjumea and Don Miguel Sánchez-Dalp. In this period, the sugar factories and the railway were established, as was the construction of the Town Hall building by Gómez Millán. These improvements extended to all social classes, particularly the leftist Town Halls during the Spanish democratic republic. We became model farmers during Franco’s dictatorship, and selected estates from our town were chosen to be visited by Eva Perón in 1947 as “exemplary Andalusian countryside”. Despite the limitations imposed by autarky and Francoist control in the 1950s and 1960s, we progressed. The population grew from 7,000 to 13,000 and even 15,000 in a few years, extending the San Jose area towards the Almonazar neighbourhood and along the Carretera Bética street with officially protected housing. The town expanded towards Barrionuevo and Tejar, on the one hand, and Ejido on the Seville exit, on the other hand.

Attracted by job opportunities in agriculture, construction, and small industry, and due to our proximity to Seville, an influx of immigrants in the 1960s overwhelmed our capacity to take them in under the traditional and semi-mediaeval Francoist methods, especially in housing. This problem became our main concern since the sight of shanty towns along the road from Seville (Veredas del Santo and Solares areas, as well as the Chapatales on the opposite end) was genuinely third-world.

The solution came with the construction of a thousand apartments in the San José area in 1972, the largest all-in one go housing project undertaken in Andalusia at the time. This project spearheaded the modernization of our streets with fluorescent lighting and the asphalting of all the roads in both La Rinconada and San José, something unheard of in Spanish towns then. This era also saw the construction of swimming pools, new schools, and subsequently, high schools, the Mercoguadalquivir agricultural market, several bank branches, sport centres, the regional National Employment Institute centre, etc.

Written by Manuel Alfonso Rincón.
(Historian from La Rinconada)