Gaucin to Ronda

This article is in two sections, last month we went from Guadiaro to Gaucin, This month, the drive takes you from Gaucin to Ronda. Each section is a half-day excursion.

The Andalucian scenery once you are a few kilometres inland is stunning. This article, in two parts, is to show anybody with a vehicle just how spectacular it is. Last month we drove from Guadiaro, via Estacion Jimena to Jimena de la Frontera and then to San Pablo and Gaucin from where we returned to the coast, a good half-day drive. This month we take up the route at Gaucin and continue to Ronda along the Carretera de Montaña via the white villages to make up a second half day or, combined with the first article, a full day.

Drive to Gaucin and on to the A405 Ronda road, heading towards Ronda. The road bypasses Gaucin itself. Just past the village is a mirador from which you can see Gaucin to your right, the mountains of Crestellina and Los Reales, the highest peak in the Sierra Bermeja ahead and the valley of the Genal, covered in cork oak trees, away to your left.

The first inhabitants of the Gaucin area were Paleo and Neolithic cave dwellers and they have left cave paintings in the vicinity. They were succeeded by the Iberians to judge from the ceramics found in the castle’s water deposit who were then influenced by the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians established the first gold mines nearby. The Romans arrived in the area around 400BC and realised that Gaucin was the easiest route to the interior. They built a road, now called the Camino de Gibraltar, which is still used and is in parts intact. During Roman times the road was just one part of the Via Augusta, a series of routes that went from Cádiz all the way to Rome. All roads did indeed lead to Rome. During the Roman occupation the first castle was built although nothing remains of it today. In the 5th Century the Visigoths invaded Gaucin. They called the town Belda. Their occupation lasted 200 years. In 714AD the Moors invaded and used the Roman roads to good advantage. The Moors renamed Belda, Gauzan and it became the westernmost outpost of the Kingdom of Granada and the site of many battles. Gaucin remained under the Moors until 1457 when King Henry IV liberated the town although many Moors (mudejars) remained until the 16th Century. Due to many rebellions against the Catholic monarchs by the mudejars they were almost constantly at war against the crown and during this period many people returned to Morocco or became vagrants. Gauzin became depopulated. There are local tales of Moroccan pirates allying themselves with the mudejars to kidnap Christians for ransom. Gaucin was in fact connected with the coastal watchtowers built to look out for these pirates. The mudejars were in turn hunted by ex soldiers and ruined farmers who sold them into slavery. The area became a lawless no-mans land until some order was restored at the end of the 17th Century. By the end of the 18th Century many British Gibraltarians used Gaucin as a summer resort, taking advantage of the cooler mountains. Then followed a turbulent period. In 1808 the French invaded Gaucin and, following a bloody battle, razed the town and stole its treasures. Bandolerismo again took over as the main occupation. The British occupation of Gibraltar provided an opportunity for the Contrabandistas who smuggled English goods into Spain from Gibraltar. An occupation that lasts to this day. The anti monarchists who then imposed heavy taxes on the population again sacked Gaucin during the Carlist wars. Although unpopular, this did lead to a period of comparative stability in the area and English tourists started to visit the Hotel Nacional in Gaucin in larger numbers. This stability only lasted until the Civil War. Many people were shot before the nationalists captured Gaucin in 1936. Again the population was impoverished and turned to banditry and smuggling. Many in Gaucin still remember this period.

Continuing along the road towards Ronda we can see, to the east across the Genal valley, the white villages of Genalguacil, Jubrique and Farajan. A mirador just past the turning to Cortes de la Frontera is the best place to stop to admire the view. On our side of the valley we pass through the picturesque village of Algatocin even higher than Gaucin at 724 metres. It is believed that the town was founded in the 14th century by a Berber tribe called the Al Atusiyin, from where the name derives. Little is known about its history since then, except that, following the re-conquest in the 15th century, Algatocín grew steadily into the prosperous town it is today, with agriculture the main source of income for most of the inhabitants. Overlooking the town is La Fuenticilla, a small hotel with an impressive traditional Spanish menu that includes wild boar, a selection of tasty tapas and excellent coffee.

Suitably refreshed the next town along the road is Benadalid. The houses in Benadalid are mainly small and whitewashed, with two tiny windows, one close to the door on the ground floor and one on the second floor. The doors are usually framed in wood, mainly chestnut, and there is often a shutter or half-door to allow the light and air in without having to keep the door open. There are many Baroque doorways in the town, in most cases being of simple design, but some having intricate carvings in Renaissance style. These date from the 17th and 18th centuries, although there are some later examples too. This type of decoration is also used in the windows of some houses, which is a typical Baroque element. The northern part of the town is the oldest with most Moorish influence and the southern part dates from after the reconquest in the late 15th century. After the reconquest, unusually, the Muslim population were allowed to stay in Benadalid, living alongside their Christian neighbours, until the expulsion of the Moriscos almost one hundred years later. To the north of the town is a castle, now used as a cemetery. Some historians suggest it is Roman, others that it dates from the 13th century. It is likely a combination of the two.

The next town, Atajate, is even higher than Algatocin, at 745 metres. It is perhaps the prettiest of the white villages, set back off the main road that now, thoughtfully, bypasses this tranquil place. Atajate has not always been so tranquil since, during Moorish times, it occupied a strategic position between the kingdoms of Seville and Granada. Then, during the long war to evict the Moors, Atajate was in a strategic position again, this time between the Moors and the Christians. Even after the reconquest Atajate suffered, this time in the early 19th century at the hands of Napoleonic troops. The local population fled to more peaceful surroundings leaving the town in the hands of bandits who held up coaches on their way from Gaucin to Ronda. Those days are not long gone as a visit to the museum in Ronda will show.

Leaving Atajate the road climbs into the mountains, the last barrier before Ronda. Most of the rock here is limestone that has formed the characteristic forms known as karstic. Deep fissures produced by water erosion of the soft, soluble rock, producing a rugged, forbidding, landscape. The eagles and vultures that spiral in the thermals above the sun-heated rock are at home here. You are most likely to see griffon vultures and booted eagles. You may be lucky and spot kestrels and hawks.

Finally we descend and reach our destination, Ronda, a typical Andalucian city in more ways than one. We approach the town from the west and our first view of the walls is the west gate into the city, clearly Moorish. The only way to see Ronda is on foot so we continue into town and use one of the car parks from which we make our way to the central gardens that overlook the valley above which Ronda is built. You will soon see that Ronda is built on a massive and precipitous rock buttress. Following the edge of the cliff around, past the Parador Hotel, takes us to the gorge that splits the buttress, and Ronda, into two parts. Here you will see a sight familiar from posters and postcards, the bridge across the gorge. It was built because the other two, lower, bridges had a habit of being washed away when the river flooded. Permission was granted for the building of a new bridge in 1542. It was completed in 1733. The bridge lasted six years before a design defect was discovered and it collapsed. In 1758 the bridge you see now was started and took twenty-nine years to complete. The bridge houses a small museum that is well worth a visit.

Peering across the gorge you will see the Casa del Rey Moro with its water mine and gardens built into the walls of the gorge. The water mine is open to visitors and contains over 300 steps that lead to a small jetty at river level from which besieged inhabitants could always extract fresh water. At the foot of the gorge the derelict buildings are all that remain of the Arabic flourmills.

The outcrop of rock on which Ronda sits has been occupied since Roman times but it was the Moors that established Ronda as a town and it became one of the capitals of the five coras of Al Andalus. Their architectural influence is very obvious in the old part of the town. In 1485 the Christian kings took the town and the Andalucian character took over. Immigrants to the town wanting to start a business found the taxes and customs duties a little onerous so they established their own town on the other side of the gorge. The open-air free market became El Mercadillo and soon attracted permanent residences built in a unique style called ‘Enlightenment’. This tradition of free markets lives on in Andalucia, as does the tax avoidance ethos.

On a more cultural note Ronda has some eccentric museums, three in the old part of town are well worth a visit. The Municipal museum is in the Mondragon Palace. The building itself is a wonderful example of Moorish architecture. The second is Museo Tematico Lara, again in the old town. This houses an eclectic private collection of cultural exhibits said to be the most important in Spain. Nearby is the Museo de Bandolero, the Bandit Museum. This could only exist in Andalucia. It is a celebration of the lives of various highwaymen, smugglers, thieves and vagabonds who lived in the area from the 16th Century right through to the mid 20th Century. The museum manages to portray these rogues as a romantic, chivalrous cross between Robin Hood and Al Capone. The museums’ serious message is reserved for two small rooms right at the back. Here there is a brief history, almost a footnote, of the Guardia who were originally established to wipe out these bandits.

Ronda is famous for its Rabo de Toro (Oxtail Stew), on the menu everywhere. It is also famous for its range of tapas. Many places offer you a selection for a fixed price but the more adventurous can just choose what they want from the bar itself. For the best value go in the places crowded with Spanish.

The easiest way to leave Ronda is to head north following the signs to the circumvelación and then the signs for San Pedro de Alcantara. Looking to your right you will have a good but brief view of the lower city walls.

Although we are now heading back towards the over populated and overbuilt Costa the day is far from over. As you leave the environs of Ronda, to your left is the highest mountain in the Sierra de las Nieves, ‘Torrecilla’ at 1,919 metres and to your right, lower but no less imposing ranges opening out until you see Los Reales in the middle distance, last seen from Gaucin. The white villages in the Genal valley can be seen way back to your right.

Suddenly you drive around a spur and there is the blue Mediterranean. It is as yet so far away that the efforts to bury the shore in concrete are not that obvious, the views east and west are breathtaking. Just before you reach San Pedro you will reach the toll road. If you have no desire to experience the concrete jungle you will find that, for a couple of euros, it takes a much more rural and less frenetic route that still offers tantalising glimpses of the coast to your left down steep, parched valleys.

Guadiaro to Gaucin

This article is in two sections, the first takes you from Guadiaro to Gaucin, The second, next month, from Gaucin to Ronda. Each half is a half-day excursion.

This driving tour will introduce the visitor to the southwest corner of Andalucia. It takes a route inland, away from the crowded coastal areas, first into the lush, green valleys of the Guadiaro and Hozgarganta rivers and then up into the drier mountain areas of Gaucin and the white villages over to Ronda. Along the way the visitor is introduced to various aspects of Andalucia, its people, its history and geography and its agricultural heritage.

Our tour starts at Guadiaro, a village on the Rio Guadiaro situated between San Enrique and Pueblo Nuevo. The origins of the town are unclear. In Roman times there was a settlement called Barbesula situated near the mouth of the Guadiaro river between present day Guadiaro and Pueblo Nuevo. A Phoenician text dating back to 400BC names a provisions and trading point on a river called the Chrysus as being at the eastern part of the Gibraltar Strait near the edge of the world. Some historians interpret the name ‘Guadiaro’ as a Latin version of the Greek name Chrysus with the Arabic prefix Wadi. An alternative suggests Guadiaro literally means ‘river of gold’. However it came by its name the town is ideally placed to allow its residents to take advantage of the fertile ground on the banks of the river. Unfortunately the Barbary pirates, corsairs from North Africa, also knew about the riches of the area and were a constant menace until they were eradicated in the early 19th Century. The torre at Torreguadiaro on the coast, built in the late 15th or early 16th century, was just one part of the coastal defences. Guadiaro is also the first point on the river at which it was convenient to cross. Until 1929, when a Spanish engineer called Torrojo built the magnificent Iron Bridge, the crossing was by riverboat. During the Peninsula War Napoleon’s troops were held up here by Spanish troops as they advanced towards San Roque.

Without the Rio Guadiaro, that never dries out in these lower reaches, even in the driest summer, the valley would be a parched wasteland. The abundant water, combined with the temperate climate, makes the valley ideal for the growing of fruit. Travelling up the river valley you soon enter the town of Secadero. So abundant was the river that when Secadero was founded in the 19th century, the main crop was rice. Today however the paddy fields have been given over to oranges and there is a thriving juice industry in the town. Between February and May the roadsides are lined with stalls selling surplus oranges by the ten-kilo bag for a fraction of the supermarket price. At the same time the scent of the new blossom on the trees is overpowering. Oranges take just over a full year to germinate, swell and ripen.

At Secadero we once again cross the Rio Guadiaro and enter the town of San Martin del Tesorillo. Again oranges are the mainstay of the town along with lemons, avocados and pomegranates. In the winter of 2005 a particularly cold night produced a frost that, overnight, killed the entire citrus crop and burnt all the leaves. Fortunately the frost was not that severe that it killed the trees themselves but they did take two years to recover. Interestingly San Martin is a centre for the study of medicinal plants indigenous to the area. As we travel towards Jimena de la Frontera we are alongside the strangely named Rio Hozgarganta that joins the Guadiaro just below Secadero.

As we move up the valley of the Hozgarganta we see a change in the vegetation. The orange groves become smaller and finally end, the land becomes more open with stands of eucalyptus and there are more cattle. This valley, due to it facing the south west and the Atlantic, is just that bit colder than the valley of the Guadiaro that faces south and the Mediterranean. On the far side of the river is the railway line that runs from Algeciras to Bobadilla beyond Ronda.

In the late 19th Century British officers, garrisoned at Gibraltar, enjoyed the campo and travelled as far as Gaucin but the roads were narrow with pot holes and craters and the carriages often had to navigate around boulders fallen on the road from the hillsides above. It took many hours, sometimes days, to even reach Gaucin. In 1890 a British engineer, John Morrison, with the backing of his friend, Sir Alexander Henderson, later Lord Faringdon, proposed a single track rail line between Algeciras and Bobadilla where it would meet the main line to Madrid. The pair had previously been responsible for building railways through atrocious country in South America so had little difficulty in Spain. The first section of line, to Estacion Jimena, was opened in October 1890 and the second stretch, to Ronda, in November 1892. The company established to build and operate the line was the Algeciras (Gibraltar) Railway Company Ltd. To cater for the gentlemen and their ladies Henderson also built two hotels the first being the Reina Kristina, at Algeciras. The architect, T.E. Colcutt, was nothing if not British and produced a baroque colonial haven of tranquillity that was typically English. In the 1890s the hotel was not only used by passengers on the new train line who would disembark from the small packet steamer from Gibraltar, it was also popular with those travelling on the P. & O. ships to India and the Far East who would disembark for the Saturday evening dances. In 1906 the Reina Victoria was built in Ronda and today offers guests the same ‘very English’ service and atmosphere enjoyed by the officers and ladies from Gibraltar a hundred years ago.

Passing through Estacion Jimena we reach the turn to Jimena de la Frontera. Numerous civilisations have gone through the lands of Jimena: Iberians, Roman, Visigoth, Arab and Christian.

It is in the Roman period that the region was at its real height, due to the intensive agricultural exploitation of the plains crossed by the rivers Guadiaro and Hozgarganta. The Roman town of Oba, situated on the hill above Jimena, already founded by the Iberians, even minted its own money. In the 4th Century AD Oba was abandoned as Rome withdrew its troops to meet the increasing threat posed by the Suevi, Alan and Vandal invaders from central Europe. In 415 AD in the rest of Andalucia the Visigoths, at the invitation of Rome, moved south from Gaul to displace the barbarian horde. They were successful and became Christian and spoke Latin. There is no evidence of them occupying Oba. The hill was ignored by the Moors during their invasion of 711 AD, and remained unoccupied until the 9th and 10th Centuries when a group of Spanish Christians established a church and small settlement on the hill beneath the Roman ruins. This site is now known as the Moorish Queen’s Bath and can still be seen. These people called their village Jimena. Only as the Muslims were being driven south out of Spain did Jimena become part of the defensive network of castles. The castle as seen today was probably started between 1150 and 1200 AD. The Arabs baptized it Ximena. It constituted an important border enclave for two centuries, acquiring its suffix ‘de la Frontera’. It was held first by the Nazarits, taken in 1431 by the Christians who held it for 20 years when it was retaken by the Muslims and finally by the Christians again in 1456. Following the Moorish occupation and final ejection in 1492, people started to move out of the castle and build the town we see today surrounding the churches. A record of 1431 mentions three churches at Jimena, one of which, the oldest, La Misericordia, was an Arab mosque until the change of religion. As in other places, the Christian church was built on top of the mosque. The town was handed over to the domain of the Medina Sidonia family in 1510. After some centuries of peace, farming and cattle breeding, the 18th Century, with the loss of Gibraltar, again turned Jimena into a military enclave. The Royal Artillery Factory at Jimena was established during this period to provide the cannon balls that bombarded Gibraltar during the 1779 - 1783 siege. There is a well-preserved canal that supplied water to the iron factory, to provide power for the water driven bellows used to blast the furnace. The canal was used by the Rodete Mill, downstream of the furnace until 1964 to grind flour. Little now remains of the furnace or factory itself. During the Peninsular Wars, 1808 - 1814, General Ballesteros used the castle as his barracks. The wall around the Moorish tower was built during this period. Jimena de la Frontera was nominated as a city in 1879. The best vantage point from which to appreciate Jimena is the castle itself. Reaching it involves winding your way through the narrow Moorish style streets. The residents of Jimena take great pride in their town and this is reflected by the abundance of flowers in pots and baskets outside many of the townhouses.

Jimena is situated in the Alcornocales National Park, an area of 170,000 hectares and one of Europe’s largest Mediterranean forests. The main species of tree is the cork oak, the bark of which is still cut revealing first the shiny crimson trunk that fades through ginger as the bark re-grows. Once the bark is cut the tree takes ten years to recover. Hidden away in the deep valleys and watercourses are some surprises. The terrain has produced a microclimate that, from the Tertiary period, has enabled some prehistoric plants to survive, there are varieties of alder, ash, laurel, hazel and rhododendron as well as several species of fern still growing and looking as they did 1.5 million years ago. One extraordinary species, Psilotum nudum, the fork or whisk fern was only discovered in 1965 by Betty Eleanor Gosset Molesworth Allen, a renowned English botanist. It is 300 million years old.

Moving on, through Jimena, we reach the road to Ubrique. Turning left here would take us, after a couple of kilometres, to the start of a walk that wends its way to the caves of Laja Alta. In the caves are paintings depicting sea scenes and Phoenician style ships. They date back to around 1,000 BC. We however turn right and soon reach the village of San Pablo de Buceite. At this point we rejoin the Rio Guadiaro and find, once again, orange orchards. There is also the Venta el Chute just before the bridge, a traditional Spanish venta, which provides a welcome refreshment break.

From San Pablo the road starts to climb. It is one of the official ‘Carratera Montana’ of Spain and, until only a few years ago, was a single-track road only really suitable for donkeys and pedestrians. The road now bypasses the village of Gaucin. This month however we return to the coast by turning right at the garage and right again following the signs for Manilva. We descend into the lush valley of the Genal river and then rapidly climb again. The mountain of Crestillina is to our left and if we are lucky we will see some of the Griffin Vultures that live on its crags.