In the opinion of the historian José Angel Walls, «those hills of Oria were sacred places from the Neolithic times and in them Iberian sanctuaries appeared, Christians, Roman-Visigoths, Muslim-Arabic, during that period in time».
At the end of the XV century, in June of 1492, the Catholic Kings gave the territories of Oria and its rights to Don Juan Chacón, son-in-law that was the son of the first wife of Don Pedro Fajardo of Quesada.
After Don Juans death in 1503, Oria passed to his second wife, Mrs. Inés Manrique who sold it in 1515 to Pedro Fajardo, first marquis of Vélez. During the XVI century Oria, lost most of their records of the population, so there is only a small amount of data available. The Marquis of Vélez had six houses, a bakery and a flour mill.
In the village at that time there were the streets, Zequia, Cojilba, Polaca, Arriba, Abajo, Portillo, Plaza, Real, Cárcel, which still remain to-day. The population of Oria at that time was only to 80. The marquis named four Officers, two ordinary mayors, an officer, a notary/churchwarden, whose tasks were to compose several different censuses, the village was poor and with its sterile earth, you could grow neither oil nor wax.
The Moorish rebellion at the end of the XVI century had a camp in the Almanzora Basin, in Oria the Maleh formed a gang of 150 men, under equal control with Sabastioan, to muster the men from nearby villages to create an uprising.
Especially dramatic was the performance carried out in Albox, where they killed 40 old Christians, they captured 13 women and two youths, and they plundered their houses.
Apart from the beautiful perspectives on the valley and the mountain, Oria offers the visitor the historical interest of its basilica of the Merced, located between the ruins of a castle and multiple vegetable gardens, constituting a beautiful print on the bottom of its mountains.
Equally we can highlight the church of the Sacred Family (XVI century), in which a historical file of interest exists and where its tower is of Mudejar style as almost all those of the county.
It is said that it was in Oria where the first parochial temple of the area was built, corresponding this to San Gregorio's church Ostiense.
The origins of Oria are supposedly to go back to around 3000 BC, when a wave of emigrants that knew of the copper that was in the area, settled in the outlets of the rivers Elks and Almanzora. Where they soon built their homes and settled down and marked this area as their territories. They came from the African North and they were a mixture of the primitive residents of this sector with the Saharauis that had been forced to emigrate when the Sahara started to dry up.
These men settled in our lands, where devoted to the development of agriculture and cattle, they introduced the "Onagro" (African ass), and they were also devoted to the exploitation of the copper, where they found veins in the Ravine of Oria. For their decorations they use shells, bones, stones and amber.
In the year 2.200 BC. It was detected that there was a violent encounter in the valley, it was the return of the megalithic tribes, founders of a glass of great perfection; some of the miners survived in some of the towns thanks to the copper. Some of these cohabited with the megalithic people; others not supporting the defeat emigrated to the lands of Catalonia.
According to Florian de Field, the origins of Oria could be in the year 200 AC. with the establishment of the town Oretano here in Oria and they are based on this statement of Greek writings.
"Of the towns of the Lusitania the more to the South it was that of the Oretanos... " "... The village of Oria, of who the cosmógrafos admits to have taken the name of Oretanos, and together with the one that the Greeks called Cataoria said that means in its language, place located near Oria... "
The permanent occupation of its natural inhabitants was the hunt that was inexhaustible; and their maintenances were mainly the barley crop. Apart from this it was a field deserted and solitary, where fear reigned, where neither palms nor vineyards were seen, this was on purpose for fear of invasions of their enemies and their persecution.
The economic Resources in the Villa of Oria, were until of the year 2002, mainly agricultural and cattle At the present time the unemployment rate in the town has diminished thanks to more than 100 work positions that have been provided by the facilities of the Centre of Re-education built on "The Lands of Oria" located to the west of the Puablo.
It is also in the process of development and construction of a Residential Home for the aged that will be completed shortly, which will also create more new jobs for the people of the district of Oria.