Hinterlands of Eastern Andalusia

Costa del Sol, the sunny coast, is a corner of fabled Andalusia where the devil of overdevelopment purchased Spain's soul during Franco's years of lead.  Our hotel stood like a souless ocean liner at the edge of the ocean, in sight of the magical Mediterranean, and not of it.

Santiago of Marbella

We searched carefully among resort towns and their strip malls for the genuine land and its stories.  Take Marbella, where they say the beautiful people are to be found. At first glance, even the hospital is a kitsch Greek Temple. But we finally found the old city. The Placa de Naranjos was where Ferdinand and Isabella planted a church to Santiago. Now it is a warm pulsing square, radiating the narrow stone streets the Arabs had left behind when they were forced to flee in 1495. Roseate stone carvings of heraldry and a stone fountain of headless 16th c cherubs surrounded us as we had grilled fish and fritata under the periodic sun and the eponymous citrus trees. Then we walked in chilling shade to the Church of the Incarnation, bulky with its chapels to gaunt Christs of soulful mournful eyes and Virgins who are always dressed for the 15th c like Madame Alexander dolls. The stone streets hid churches of early centuries, an extraordinary British guitarist who dominated the echoing stone, and from a window two godlike boxer canines with impassive gazes from sorrowful eyes.

Boxers of Marbella

The next day I drove out through our own city, busy Benalmadena with its Arabic gardens and brightly muraled sports center, to the interior. Spikey toy-like housing developments slowly give way to mountainous land, poor, sometimes burnt, sustaining but a few sheep. Even the nature preserves are rocky and scrubby. The highway slices through chunky slate and rust colored rock or light boulders dusted with red, till near the white village of Ronda the stony hills are gray and lunar It is a beautiful mountain drive up and down the curving cliffsides. Ronda is terraced with the same undistinctive housing developments spreading through the more fertile valley, then a commercial center bustling with character for all its banality. But the old Ronda is an Arab city of fortified double walls, labyrinthine stone streets between closely spaced whitewashed houses, the occasional 15th c facade in roseate stone with heraldic carvings. The Arabs yielded it in 1485 like much of Costa del Sol.

Arab baths of Ronda

The old city starts at the Punta Nueva, a monumental bridge over the plunging gorge that dramatically enters the old city by the Santo Domingo convent, also Inquisition headquarters. Along the street is the castle of a Moorish king said to drink from the skulls of his enemies. We descended the stony footpaths of the city that rises and falls precipitously to the Arab Baths. In the 13th c a poor donkey drove the pump that kept lifting water from beneath into these three stone rooms (hot, warm, cold), with their fluted columns and star shaped openings to the sky.

When the Christians conquered in 1485 they built over mosques to create Santa Maria Major and other churches. Santa Maria sits under her square tower decorated with roccoco spires that the publisher Hearst copied for his own castle. The church was begun as a momumental gothic construction, but was so resented by Seville that it was cut back in size. Each chapel is lavishly outfitted mostly with dressed Virgins for most of these churches are dedicated to the Incarnacion. The main altar under a huge baroque Baldaquin carved of Canadian red cedar is a modern day immaculate conception, the piercing of her heart by the ruggedly handsome angel. The painted statues of Spanish churches can seem like store manequins, but the carving and silverwork is of the highest order.

Iglesia del Carmen, Antequerra

On another day we embarked, in the pouring, blinding, rain, toward Verja, a former fishing village where coves and caves and stone palisades form a charming relationship with the sea. A cave nearby has yielded paintings and other findings as old as 43,000 years, and painting from 20,000 BC or so. From Verja's Balcon de l'Europe, a grand esplanade, one can see Morocco--but not that day. The town has been touristified so we drove on (as the rain recommenced) to Frigilliana, another white washed town that wound tightly upward. It had been an Arab stronghold during 16th c rebellion of the Arabs that led to a total expulsion. Azuleros, inlaid ceramics along the winding stone streets, told in old Spanish of the Moors' happiness, health and hard work, the fertile soil, and then their valour and suffering at the hands of the Spanish. The views were of large, enveloping clouds moving around us, over winding orchards and neatly terraced lands of the broad valley, and the village's bright wisteria, jasmine and hibiscus. The main commercial offering was restaurants with mirador, panoramic views of the beautiful white winding village.

Another outing took us to Antequerra, whose rock abutments contain ancient dolmens, while the high Renaissance city overlooks Roman ruins. In the driving rain we popped into a pub, lavishly and meticulously British with heraldry, an old fire truck, dart boards and on TV some hefty Spanish jokers, like their American counterparts, starting a business with clueless faces and glamorous wives. As it started to clear we struck out, though the monumental Renaissance churches and convents and museum were all still closed for siesta. A dark little man rushed with keys jingling to open the Iglesia del Carmen. Baroque and roccoco, with dark sinister paintings, it was built in the late 16th c with chapels painted like lavish wallpaper. The high ceiling (1614) was mudejar style, wood beams of interlaced stars and Moorish detail. The high altar was the intricately carved mountainous style, like a giant Buddhist scenario, with its painted statues perched in nooks and tree branches, of the Cathedral at Ronda. The chapels housed gaunt suffering Christs, even in the fluffy roccoco tabernacles, and dressed Virgins with their elegant sorrow.

Canadian Red Cedar carved chapel

When we emerged a glaring sun lit up the valley of orchards and veinyard and pueblos blancos, and a double rainbow arched halfway above the craggy rock mountain where dolmen mark a much earlier time. We stood on the Plaza with the Renaissance Cathedral San Sebastian, inaugurated 1550, and looked down on Roman baths. It is not hard to appreciate the advantages of settling here those many thousands of years ago. San Sebastian is spare in a Florentine manner, domes perfectly spaced, unlike any church we had seen in the region. There was a huge Tarascon, which is a beautiful woman holding a mirror with multiple serpents composing her lower body--a common sight in holy processions.

Unfortunately, most of the photos I took have been lost. I offer a few photos taken with my iPhone.  My camera was subsequently stolen in Barcelona. I tried downloading photos from Wikicommons and ended up with an infected computer! Which photo did the dirty work, I don't know, but I suspect it was a demonic monkey from Gibralter!  So, disk fully erased and restored with the loss of a month's work. I ask you, dear reader, to be content with my words and your own imagination!