The name of Arico el Viejo seems to have arisen from the need to differentiate it from the one known as “el Nuevo”, thus giving the municipality, together with the Villa de Arico, three nuclei of the same name: the so-called “Tres Aricos” (Three Aricos).
The emergence and development of Arico el Viejo must have been favoured by the crossing of some important roads of the time: the old Camino de Mar a Cumbre, which started from the villages of El Porís and La Punta de Abona; and the old Camino Real del Sur or Camino de Medianías, later converted into the so-called Carretera General del Sur (1858-1975), at least in most of its route towards the area of Fasnia.
By the 1850s there was already a hamlet made up of about half a hundred inhabited huts and earthen houses, which housed some 395 people. Throughout the 20th century, both the number of houses and the population increased according to the times, with economic activity being closely related to agriculture, livestock farming and commerce.
Its church, the church of Nuestro Señor de la Cruz, began to be built in the early 1900s, on the initiative of the Martín González family, who donated the land next to the road to El Porís and paid for its construction. Throughout the 20th century, new reconstruction work and repairs were carried out, and the square was added to in the 1950s.
From here, and continuing along the Vera de los Cangueros road, annexed to this square, walking on the tracks of the old Camino Real, in just under a quarter of a day, you reach the historic hamlets of Arico El Nuevo and Villa de Arico. The path runs between old roads, canals, cave-houses, water channels, gully falls, small stone quarries and the remains of old terraces or “nateros”, where subsistence agriculture was practised. This contrasts today with the more professionalised estates of the new crops that have been introduced, which have allowed the development of a good wine-growing heritage and motivated the future yearning for a prosperous olive-growing industry.
Starting from this same square and following the road up to the highest point of the street and neighbourhood of La Degollada, on the disappeared path to the summit, we can find the well-known Fuente de Los Chorros, made of volcanic tuff or chasnera stone, typical of the area, with some elements of basalt, more resistant to erosion and therefore used to support the containers with which the locals used to collect water for the houses.
