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Alcañices (Portuguese: Alcanises) is a municipality located in the province of Zamora, Castile and León, Spain. It is very close to the Portugal-Spain border, not far from the Portuguese town of Bragança. In fact, the Village is especially remembered for being the seat of the Treaty of Alcañices that on 12 September 1297 defined the border between Portugal and the Crown of Castile, the oldest in Europe.
Its name is of Arabic origin and means "the churches", although the origin of the town may have been a hillfort of the Zoelae.
During the Visigoths Enlisted as a free territory until in 586 King Liuvigild assigned it the Pagus Alistii to the Archbishop of Braga, which in 675 the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela claimed as his own for not agreeing with the award.
In the Reconquest, Alfonso IX of León gave it to the Order of the Temple in 1175 for its repopulation, which in 1210 built a castle and 1255 erected a Commandery. Tradition says that Saint Francis of Assisi passed through Alcañices in 1214 when he was on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
From 1371 to 1820 Alcañices was a manor town of the March of Alcañices, which in 1741 became part of the Ducal House of Alburquerque. During this time, the Marquises built a hospital for pilgrims, an alhóndiga for communal grain, a bridge, a series of fountains and several mills and promoted the creation of a Franciscan convent, which maintained that condition until its confiscation in 1848, as well as a palace within the fortress that is currently a residence for the elderly. In the local toponymy there are still references to the Prado del Marqués or the Huerta del Marqués. In addition, during this period part of the old wall was rebuilt, which had an active military use until 1817.
Text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
6 photographs of Alcañices, taken here and in its own light.
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