Atotonilco el Alto

Atotonilco el Alto is a town in Jalisco at about 1,600 metres above sea level, between the Ciénega de Chapala and the Altos highlands. Its position halfway between Guadalajara, La Piedad, Ocotlán, La Barca and León made it a trading centre for the region. At the 2020 census it had 28,678 people. The name comes from Nahuatl and translates as "place of hot water".

A legend says the town was founded by the Purépecha after a Tarascan ruler saw his daughter cured in the waters of a hot spring; documented history begins with Nuño de Guzmán's conquest in 1530. Its first encomendero was Martín del Campo, Franciscan friars led the conversion of the area, and in 1551 it was granted to Andrés de Villanueva. In 1824 the state Congress made it a villa and the seat of a department that included Arandas, and on 15 May 1868 it was declared a city.

Today Atotonilco is above all a name on tequila labels. Siete Leguas, Don Julio, El Viejito and Tres Magueyes are among the brands made here. Siete Leguas, a family distillery on Calle Independencia, is where Patrón tequila was first produced, and it still uses old methods: adobe ovens to cook the agave and a tahona, the big stone wheel that crushes it, pulled by burros. Distillery shops line Independencia, and in February 2026 Patrón, which has its distillery and ageing warehouses here, opened a casona of its own in town. Besides agave, local farms grow raspberries, strawberries and blackberries, and the town makes leather belts and saddles. With its orchards, springs and reservoirs the municipality is nicknamed the "Garden of Jalisco".

In the centre, the parish church of San Miguel Arcángel has a Baroque portal of pink stone, a three-tier tower and a stained-glass dome credited to Adamo Boari, the architect of Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes. The municipal palace, in carved pink stone, dates from 1841, and the Sanctuary of La Purísima from 1831. The patron saint's festival of San Miguel runs from 21 to 29 September, and on 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the streets are hung with tissue-paper ribbons and the town band parades through them.