El Rosal () is a municipality and town of Colombia in the

Western Savanna Province Western Savanna Province is one of the 15 provinces in the Cundinamarca Department, Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's ...

, part of the department of Cundinamarca. El Rosal is situated on the

Bogotá savanna The Bogotá savanna is a montane savanna, located in the southwestern part of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in the center of Colombia. The Bogotá savanna has an extent of and an average altitude of . The savanna is situated in the Eastern Ran ...

with its urban centre at an altitude of and a distance of from the capital Bogotá. It is part of the

Metropolitan Area of Bogotá Metropolitan Area of Bogotá is the metropolitan area of the Colombian capital city of Bogotá, usually used for statistical analysis or technical use. It is not a formal administrative division and its limits are therefore not defined. The st ...

. El Rosal borders

Subachoque Subachoque is a municipality and town of Colombia in the Western Savanna Province, part of the department of Cundinamarca. The municipality is situated on the Bogotá savanna with the urban centre at an altitude of at a distance of from the c ...

in the northeast,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in the northwest,

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

in the southeast and

Facatativá Facatativá is a city and municipality in the Cundinamarca Department, located about 18 miles (31 km) northwest of Bogotá, Colombia and 2,586 meters above sea level. The city is known for its Archaeological Park Piedras del Tunjo (Rocks ...

in the southwest.Official website El Rosal
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History

The area of Subachoque, of which El Rosal was a part until 1903, in the times before the

Spanish conquest The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its predece ...

, was inhabited by the

Muisca The Muisca (also called Chibcha) are an indigenous people and culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia, that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish conquest. The people spoke Muysccubun, a language of the Chibchan langu ...

. The ''

zipa When the Spanish arrived in the central Colombian highlands, the region was organized into the Muisca Confederation, which had two rulers; the ''zipa'' was the ruler of the southern part and based in Muyquytá. The ''hoa'' was the ruler of the ...

'' of Bacatá ruled over Subachoque. The Panche lived to the west of Subachoque and when the conquistadores arrived, they took advantage of the situation and entered the Muisca territories. Subachoque and El Rosal were submitted by Nicolás de Federman in 1538. The Muisca agriculture consisted of

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es,

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

coca Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The plant is grown as a cash crop in the Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, ...

, arracacha, sweet potatoes,

tuber Tubers are a type of enlarged structure used as storage organs for nutrients in some plants. They are used for the plant's perennation (survival of the winter or dry months), to provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growin ...

s and chungua. Modern El Rosal was founded on March 28, 1903 by Ana Vicenta González.

Economy

A large percentage of this agricultural community is employed by large scale flower growers in the production of roses, carnations, astromelias and other varieties of flowers. Other crops which contribute to the economy are potatoes, carrots, corn, sweetpeas, string beans and herbs. Wheat was a major crop until the 1930s when the price fell and made it economically unfeasible to continue planting it. Dairy farms, meat cattle, goats and horses are also vital parts of the El Rosal economy.

References

{{Authority control Municipalities of Cundinamarca Department Populated places established in 1903 1903 establishments in Colombia