It is believed that trade contacts with the Phoenicians existed from the late 10th century, and it is even assumed that Tartessos was located at this site. In addition to objects made of silver, copper, iron, ivory and stone, many thousands of fragments of clay vessels were found during excavations from around 900 to 770 B.C. in 1998. Huelva was probably an early Phoenician emporium and it was flourishing under the Carthaginians and Romans, who began to mine ore deposits. Under the Visigoths and Arabs, from whom the city was reconquered by Alfonso X the Wise in 1257, the city came to a standstill.

In 1880 it still only had 13,000 inhabitants, then it grew fast. It owes its boom to the mineral deposits on the Rio Tinto (Minas de Riotinto), as from the last quarter of the 19th century, the town became a small British colony. The reason for this was the permission granted by the Spanish government in 1873 for the mines of Riotinto to be commercially developed and utilised by the Rio Tinto Company Limited. As a result, the town and its infrastructure began to grow and the sleepy little village became a modern industrial town of the 19th century and an elegant town in the first centuries of the 20th-

The British also brought football to Spain, which led to the founding of the first football club in Spain - Recreativo Huelva - in 1889.
Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (also known as Parroquia de la Purísima Concepción) is considered the first parish in Spain dedicated to the devotion of the Immaculate Conception.

The building was built in 1515. In 1642, work is known to have been carried out on the decoration of the main chapel. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and a smaller one eight years later caused serious damage to the church, with the walls and tower collapsing. It was rebuilt in the decades that followed. It got destroyed in July 1936 during the riots that followed the outbreak of Spanish Civil War. Between 1937 and 1939, it was rebuilt, respecting the baroque additions. It had to be restored again after an earthquake in 1969.