Description:
REAL, Revista de Estudios Almerienses, especial bicentenario, p. 6-27.
This work studies the complex gestation of the province of Almería, as an administrative unit segregated from the kingdom of Granada, in the first third of the 19th century. The Napoleonic occupation
gave rise to an attempt to import the French departmental model (1810); at that stage Javier de Burgos was sub-prefect of Almería. The Constitution of 1812 provided for the realization of a more
convenient division of the territory. Once the absolutist lapse was overcome, the final project was elaborated and discussed by the Parliament in 1820-1822. The authors of the first idea (Bauzá and
Larramendi) proposed to form a new province in the eastern part of the kingdom of Granada, placing its capital in Baza. A bitter debate then arose between the two cities. Burgos defended the candidacy
of Almería and the conservation of Baza in Granada. This was also the opinion of the Cortes commission and the plenary, in such a way that the decree of January 27 of 1822 marked the birth of the
province of Almería as we know it today, practically with the same limits definitively restored in 1833 by decree of J. de Burgos himself.