On October 18, 1737 King Philip V of Spain issued a royal charter by which it appointed as Governor of Chile Brigadier José Antonio Manso de Velasco, who had shown outstanding management abilities and was especially enterprising in the area of founding new settlements.

The dominating policy in colonial Chile was to establish towns and cities and then to force the native inhabitants to live in urban populations. Manso de Velasco mapped towns where there were only forests and swamps or pitiful settlements. Curicó was one of these settlements. Many of the towns founded by the Spanish in Chile occupied the vicinity of an established church, and that is precisely what happened in Curico.
The Franciscan Fathers were responsible for building Curico’s first public church in the year 1734. That

same year, Friar Francisco Beltrán ordered Father Gaspar Rellero to leave for the Maule valley and carry out their mission. On August 3, 1734, Father Rellero started south with explicit instructions to look out for a plain, near a small hill, that the Order’s Superior had seen in the area called Curico. The Father stopped in Carrizal, name given then to lands to the east of this city and the cultivated fields of Pino.
The Franciscan church was to be built in Carrizal next to the hill.  However, Maestro de Campo Manuel Díaz Fernández, who had ordered the church built, knew that site to be too humid and dictated it should be moved westward.  Don Francisco Iturriaga donated ten blocks of land, and the church’s foundations were placed in the angle formed by the crossroads of the coast road and the road leading to the Old Convent area.  In April 1735 the church was finished and inaugurated by its founders Don Díaz Fernández and Father Rellero.
The territory of Curicó belonged administratively to the Partido del Maule, between the Teno River to the south and up to the Colchagua River in the north.  Ecclesiastically the territory was dependent on the parish of San José  Toro or San José de Chimbarongo; hence the name San José de Curico.
The spot where the Franciscans had built their church was the most populous one in the area between the Teno and Lontué rivers, with about four thousand inhabitants. The small settlement grew once the church was established and was later chosen by Manso de Velasco to found a town.
As Manso de Velasco had already conceived his master plan for future town, his attention was drawn to this village and decided this would be an excellent meeting point for the native Indians scattered throughout the countryside. In 1743 he ordered the founding of a town with the name of San Jose de Buenavista of Curico, in lands of Don Lorenzo de Labra.

It was called Buenavista because of the beautiful view of the lower plains, as seen from the high Teno road.  However, over time both Buen

avista and San José fell in disuse, and the town’s name becam e Curico except for the official name used in the town squares.

Although many settlers built their homes in Curico, during the first years the city’s existence was precarious.  It was mainly only a stopping place for travelers, with inns and changes of horses and beasts of burden. The population did not grow and many plots of land remained undeveloped.
The problem was that the location of the town had been badly chosen, as the site was low and humid. Lack of good hygienic conditions prevented the town’s progress.