Record Atlas
3 eras · 1230–2026 · 17 places

Extremadura — Cáceres, Badajoz, Mérida

Cáceres, Badajoz, Mérida, Plasencia. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1230–1640 Crown of Castile — military orders hold about half the land PARES · FamilySearch

Alfonso IX of León took Alcántara in 1214, Cáceres in 1227-1229, and Mérida and Badajoz in 1230; Trujillo fell in 1232 and Medellín in 1234, and the last fortresses in Lower Extremadura were taken by 1248. The Orders of Santiago and Alcántara held about half the territory by the late Middle Ages.
1640–1833 Spain — border region during the Portuguese Restoration War (1640-1668) PARES · FamilySearch

The region suffered pillage, raids and destruction along the border in 1640-1668.
1833–2026 Spain — provinces of Cáceres and Badajoz; autonomous community (Statute dated 26 Feb 1983) PARES · FamilySearch

The civil register law of 20 June 1870 took effect on 1 January 1871; earlier baptisms, marriages and burials are in parish books.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1230–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

17 places on this ground

47 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

All record regions · The map