in Mérida (
Emerita Augusta), capital of the Roman province of
Hispania Lusitana. During the time of the
Roman Empire, the area that is known today as Autonomous Community of Extremadura was part of
Lusitania, a Roman province that included most of current day Portugal (except for the northern area today known as
Norte Region) and the central western portion of the current day Spain.
Mérida (now capital of Extremadura) became the capital of the Roman province of Lusitania, and one of the most important cities in the
Roman Empire. Like the bulk of the Iberian Peninsula, the territory
was conquered by the Umayyads in the early 8th century. As part of the
Emirate and later
Caliphate of Córdoba, it largely constituted a territorial subdivision (
kūra) of the former polities centered on Mérida. Following the collapse of the Caliphate in the early 11th century during the so-called
Fitna of al-Andalus and its ensuing fragmentation into ephemeral statelets (
taifas), the bulk of the territory of current day Extremadura became part of the (First)
Taifa of Badajoz (
Baṭalyaws), centered around the namesake city and founded by
Sapur, a
saqaliba previously
freed by
Al-Hakam II. ''. Conversely, the kingdoms of
León,
Castile and
Portugal (most notably the first one) made advances in the 11th and 12th centuries across the territory (with for example the successive Leonese conquests of
Coria in 1079 and 1142, the Portuguese attempts at expanding across the
Guadiana basin in the second half of the 12th century, or the Castilian founding of
Plasencia in 1186) not free from setbacks either caused by the
Almoravid and
Almohad impetus, which also entailed the demise of the first and second taifa of Badajoz in 1094 and 1150, respectively. In the Almohad case, their 1174 offensive removed Leonese control from every fortress south of the
Tagus (including
Cáceres). After the Almohad disaster at the 1212
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, the remaining part of current-day Extremadura under Muslim control fell to the troops led by
Alfonso IX of León—
Alcántara (1214), Cáceres (1227–1229), Mérida (1230),
Badajoz (1230)—and later to the military orders of
Santiago and
Alcántara—
Trujillo (1232),
Medellín (1234)—on behalf of
Ferdinand III of Castile. The last fortresses in the Lower Extremadura were conquered by Christians by 1248. By the late Middle Ages, the territory of the current-day region consisted of mayorazgos of the military orders of
Santiago and
Alcántara (about half the territory), nobiliary lordships (about a quarter of the territory) and royal demesne towns (the other quarter of the territory). In between the 15th and 16th centuries, the concept of the Leonese and Castilian
extremaduras diluted and the name eventually came to refer to the territory of the current-day region. The territory lacked nonetheless shared government and administration institutions. In between 1570 and 1572, the Crown forcibly relocated about 11,000
moriscos into the territory as part of the deportation of Granadans that followed the defeat of the
Alpujarras revolt. The distribution was somewhat chaotic although some places with an already "threatening" population of old moriscos (such as
Hornachos,
Magacela and
Benquerencia) were avoided as resettlement locations for the Granadan moriscos. Two
generations later, the
expulsion of the moriscos from the region began in 1609, starting with the moriscos of Hornachos, the first expulsion in the Crown of Castile. By September 1610 about two thirds of the moriscos of Extremadura had been already expelled and by 1611 the number amounted to 12,776. Those who avoided the early orders of expulsion abided to reports of being 'good Christians' or claimed a status as 'old moriscos'. At the height of 1612, there were reports of remaining moriscos in Trujillo, Mérida and Plasencia. . Located in the most convenient path from the
Meseta Central to Portugal, the territory suffered greatly due to warfare from the 1640–1668
Portuguese Restoration War, characterised not by the movement of large armies but by pillage, skirmishes, raids, and destruction of economic resources and settlements across both sides of the
Raya. The growing role of the fortified place of Badajoz (halfway between Lisbon and Madrid), in the wake of the installment of the Captaincy General of Extremadura consolidated the clout of the military in the region. By the late 18th century, the Extremaduran countryside languished, experiencing a deep crisis. There was a diminishing share of land dedicated to crops. The growing cattle sector induced the creation of yet more pastures, adding up to the structural problem stemmed from the extraordinary degree of
concentration of land ownership. By the end of the Ancien Régime, the clergy, municipal councils and the royal army mattered more than the lesser role of the entitled nobility. Railways were developed in the second half of the 19th century. In September 1863, a passenger train arrived to Badajoz from
Elvas, Portugal. It was the first train in the region and the first international service in the Iberian Peninsula. In 1866, the was completed, enabling the link with Madrid. The
Madrid–Valencia de Alcántara line, a new connection passing through the province of Cáceres, was fully completed in 1881. During the 1936–1939
Spanish Civil War, the
Nationalist faction Columna Madrid advanced quickly across the province of Badajoz in August 1936 and left merciless repression and mass casualties behind. Badajoz was the Spanish province where the
Francoist repression comparatively took the highest relative toll of victims during the war and the immediate Post-War period; there were around 12,000 executions in the province (out of the 14,000 in the whole region), compared to around 1,600 victims of the Republican repression. In the mid 20th century, the
Francoist dictatorship pursued a policy of colonization and agrarian reform in the region to foster the economy, transforming thousands of hectares of dryland crops into irrigated lands, also favouring the erection of 63 new settlements by the
Instituto Nacional de Colonización (INC). The second half of the 20th century saw a massive
rural flight out of the region, both to the industrialised areas of Spain (already started in 1955) as well as to richer European countries (such as Germany, France and Switzerland), both of which notably intensified after 1961, in the wake of the
1959 Stabilization Plan (and in the second case also after bilateral agreements reached with destination countries). The region henceforth was handed a demographic blow in the ensuing years, with the effective expulsion of nearly a 40% of the population, particularly young people. A pre-autonomous government entity in Extremadura (the "Junta Regional de Extremadura") with jurisdiction over the provinces of Badajoz and Cáceres was created by means of a 1978 law. The draft of the regional
Statute of Autonomy began in 1980, the first step toward Extremadura becoming one of the Spanish
autonomous communities. The text passed its final hurdle as it was enshrined as
Organic Law in 1982. The
first election to the Assembly of Extremadura took place in May 1983. == Government and administration ==