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There are remains of old settlers from the Neolithic Age, although the most important sites are of the Roman period with the names of Lascuta and Turris Lascutana. There are also relics of a Visigothic village which was in this area up until the arrival of the Muslims, who built a fortress which gives the name to the village ("castle" in Arabic is Al Kalat). The king of Granada gave this city to the lineage of the Gazules noblemen, from where it took its final denomination. In 1248, it was conquered by Fernando III, but once again passed into the hands of the Muslims, until in 1264 it was reconquered by King Alfonso X el Sabio (the Wise). In 1444, Juan II gave it up to the feudal estate of the Ribera family, named in the middle of the XVI century as the Dukes of Alcalá de los Gazules. The following centuries, XVII and XVII, were of prosperity and the development of the village until the arrival of the XIX century, in which the epidemics of yellow fever and cholera reduced the population, and the invasion of the Napoleonic troops sacked and destroyed the castle and the bridge over the Barbate river.

In 1876, King Alfonso XII gave it the title of city and in 1984 its old part of the city was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument.