Candela

History

Candela's story begins in 1690, when General Alonso de León, governor of the province of Coahuila, founded the mission of San Bernardino de la Candela and settled it with Tlaxcalans and people of other Indigenous groups. The attempt lasted only five years. The land was harsh, groups that had not submitted to Spanish rule kept attacking, and in 1695 the mission was abandoned.

Nearly a century later, in 1774, Governor Jacobo de Ugarte y Loyola ordered Joaquín Sánchez Navarro to repopulate the area with forty-four Spanish families. The new settlement, built close to the old mission site, was called San Carlos de la Candela, and this time it took hold. After independence and the creation of the state of Coahuila, it became the seat of a municipality.

In 1890 the state congress raised it to the rank of city under the name Ciudad Romero Rubio, after Manuel Romero Rubio, interior minister and father-in-law of Porfirio Díaz. With the Revolution won, the town recovered its old name in 1921, and both town and municipality have been called Candela ever since. It was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2015.