La Sauceda and the Las Buitreras gorge, adjoining the El Colmenar neighbourhood, are only two examples of the bounty that nature has bestowed upon this municipality. The first site is fully equipped for camping and taking however much time one wishes to enjoy the surroundings, while the latter-Las Buitreras-is more difficult of access but compensates for this with an astonishing spectacle: the channel of the River Guadiaro confined between walls more than 100 metres high.
It seems that the origins of Cortes de la Frontera date back to the twelfth and eleventh centuries B. C., when the Phoenicians arrived in this area where the Tartessians were already established. Centuries later the Greeks made their appearance, which can be described as fleeting, as it generally was on the coasts of Andalusia. After the Greeks came the Romans, from whose era sufficient evidence remains: the traces of the town of Saepona 28 kilometres from the present village and the ruins of Cortes el Viejo (Old Cortes), only two kilometres from the village in a setting that overlooks a long stretch of the River Guadiaro.
The Muslims confronted the Visigoths on Cortesano soil in the year 711 in a place that is still recognizable today, according to a number of researchers. At the death of Almanzor in 1002, Cortes belonged alternately to the kingdoms of Seville and Granada and even to the kingdoms of Ronda and Algeciras. Fernando III the Saint conquered the village in 1248 but it later again passed into the hands of the Muslims until the Marquise of Cádiz, Rodrigo Ponce de León, took it in the name of the Catholic Monarchs in 1485. This kind of alternation between one kingdom and another was not unusual with villages that had “de la Frontera” (“of the Frontier”) as part of their names.
The modern location of the village is more recent, having its origin in the seventeenth century. It was in that period that cork exploitation, one of the locality’s main sources of wealth, began to develop. It continues to be one of the pillars of the economy of Cortes de la Frontera.
Due to the era in which the village was founded its urban structure is noticeably different from that of many mountain localities that have a Moorish heritage. The municipality is also unusual in having three centres of population, which it is not unique in the province of Málaga but is nevertheless not common. They are: the main population centre, which is Cortes de la Frontera itself, El Colmenar and La Cañada or Estación de Cortes.
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