The town is located in a slope of the right margin of the river and is principally a fruit-growing area. It is made up of four districts - Providence, Assumption, San Roque and the town centre/historic area. Although settled by the Romans in the 4th century BC, and governed by the Visigothic Teodomiro (Tudmir) I the 8th century, for the origins of the village it is necessary to look back to the Arab dominance in Spain, although then it was just an isolated village. From the fourteenth century until 1502, this village was called Asnete, a Castilian version of an Arab derived word spoken by its Mudéjar inhabitants who occupied themselves with cultivating their extremely fertile fields and delicate ecosystem; they were politically dependent for centuries on the Encomienda Santiagiusta de Ricote and religiously so on the Ulea curate, a source of innumerable disagreements which gave rise to multiple attempts at independence.
During the 16th century, council led government alternated with other periods of strict government by the Encomienda, with the transformation of the old 15th century mosque into a Christian church dedicated to Saint Matthew being especially notable in 1502. When the Muslim council becomes the first Christian council and takes the name of Villanueva del Val del Ricote, the patronage also changes in favour of Nuestra Seíñora de Asunción; also noteworthy is the concession of Title and Privilege of the Village by Felipe II in 1588, when there were 78 neighbours (320 inhabitants), marking the start of the village's greatest development period up until the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1614.
The country house was extended with the rise in the number of inhabitants from the Barrio de la Cuna, today considered a national heritage site along with the parish church, to the Barrio Alto where you can see some cave-houses in 'los casones' with flattened earth paving, some houses with thick mud and plaster walls and one or two family homes in the old Calle Empedrá that belonged to noble families like the López de Artiz of Basque origin which boasts a rear patio, a large kitchen, pantry and barn. At the end of the 12th century and during all of the 13th century, the extension of the irrigation channel network allows for the spread of irrigation as a source of wealth in Villanueva del Valle or Villanueva del Río, depending on the reference. In 1953, the visit by Bishop Ramón Sanahuja y Marcé confirmed the appointment of Villanueva del Rio Segura's own priest, the village having being called that since 1096, bringing to an end the secular dispute with neighbouring Ulea, with which it is joined not only via uncountable marriages but also by several rope bridges and tables destroyed by the river, by the boat"Esperanza Concordia" given as a gift by the illustrious Bishop's Secretary Jesualdo Maria Miíñano López and, in the twentieth century, by the current bridge, itself nearly destroyed in 1982.
