Fuente de Piedra is situated on a practically
flat area, surrounded by the Sierras de Mollina mountain
range, whose highest peaks reach to almost 800 metres. The
highest point within the municipality of Fuente de Piedra
is the Conejas, at 500 metres. The first settlements here
date back a long way, to the 5th century B.C., although
the first written reference to the place dates from Roman
times.
This is written in Latin, its translation
being: "Lucio Postumio Satulio, by the vote that he
has by right, dedicates this altar stone of the divine fountain."
The reference is to the water with its curative powers,
and which gives the name to the town, in that those who
drink it will be cured of their "mal de la piedra",
illness of the stone, meaning gall stones. After the Moorish
domination, the town was abandoned in 1461, reconstructed
once more in 1547. Then followed its period of maximum splendour,
with the water being exported as far as the Kingdom of Naples
and America.
A series of epidemics in the 18th and
early 19th centuries decimated the population of the town,
and the fountain had to be lifted and brought to another
site. It was believed that this caused the water to lose
its curative properties, and the fountain was abandoned,
to be finally covered over in 1959. In 1990 it was excavated
into existence again and restored in 1994, where it can
now be seen in the Plaza de la Constitución. The
history of the town itself has always been closely linked
with the history of the salt lake, the Laguna Salada. This
was worked for the extraction of salt from Roman times until
1951. The lake was named a National Hunting Refuge in 1981,
and at present is a national reserve that has a large colony
of flamingoes that breed there.
The lake, which is only 500 metres
from the town itself, is elliptical shaped, measuring about
6,5 kilometres from end to end and 2,5 kilometres wide,
occupying a space of 1,300 hectares. Its geological make-up
has resulted in a unique collection of flora and fauna in
this place, a humid zone in the western Mediterranean that
is home to the biggest flamingo breeding grounds in all
of Spain. Along with the humid zones of Campillos, made
up of six lakes, and the lake at La Ratosa in Alameda, Andalucía
thus has a magnificent complex of lakes rich in animal,
bird and plant life
