In this section: Seville | Ronda
The main city in the area around the hacienda, Seville is the capital city of Andalucia and has the reputation as being Spain’s party town. It is an exuberant city closely associated with flamenco, bullfighting and hot-blooded romance typified by the gypsy heroine, Carmen
Ronda is one of Spain’s loveliest cities and was reputedly Hemingway’s favourite in Spain. It stands on a towering plateau and is most famous for the plunging river gorge that divides the medieval part of town from the modern part and is spanned by an extraordinary bridge. It also contains the oldest bullring in Spain.
Seville (pronounced Seveeya locally) is a compact and relaxing city with a rich cultural heritage. Most of its principal sights are found very close to the city centre which is on the east bank of the Rio Guadalquiver. Visitors usually head straight here to see Seville’s famous cathedral and the Plaza de Espana.
Seville’s cathedral occupies the site of a great mosque built by the Almohads in the late 12th Century. The Giralda, the cathedral’s bell tower, is a legacy of its Moorish past. It may be the world’s largest cathedral - it is certainly the largest Gothic building in the world – and took over 100 years to build. It contains the lavish tomb of Christopher Columbus, though whether it actually contains his body is disputed by many.
Close by the cathedral is the Real Alcazar, one of Seville’s royal palaces and one of the best examples of mudejar architecture in Spain, second only to the Alhambra in Granada. It is still used as a residence by the King and Queen of Spain.
On the banks of the Rio Guadalquiver is the Torre del Oro (the Golden Tower) built by the Moors as a way to control access to the harbour, a massive chain being stretched across the river to another tower opposite. It top was once covered in gold tiles which reflected the sunlight and made the tower visible to the boat traffic. It is now the Maritime Museum.
To the north lies the Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza, Seville’s bullring and one of Spain’s oldest. Even if you dislike the idea of bullfighting, this arena is an aesthetic marvel. In general, bullfighting is in decline but it remains an important part of Seville’s culture.
A short walk further north lies the Museo de Bellas Artes, a former convent and now one of the finest art museums in Spain and featuring most of Spain’s most famous medieval artists. Murillo’s Virgin and Child, painted on a napkin is one of the most popular works.
The area to the south of the city centre is dominated by the Parque Maria Luisa, Seville’s main green area. This contains the spectacular Plaza de Espana built as the centrepiece of the 1929 Spanish-America fair. There are a number of mini-canals and fountains here and it overlooks the main part of the park. The park can be toured by horse and carriage rides that leave from close to the Plaza de Espana.
On the edge of the park is the city’s old tobacco factory, now part of the University. This is the setting for Bizet’s opera Carmen, forever associated with Spanish romance.
Ronda stands on a massive rocky outcrop straddling a precipitous limestone cleft. It was a near impregnable position and was one of the last Moorish bastions, finally falling to the Christians in 1485.
The main road up to Ronda is also a spectacular drive, winding its way through the mountains. Ronda is surrounded by three national parks, each of which offers a wealth of beautiful scenery. Both the Grazalema and Nieves national parks have been declared Biosphere Reserves by Unesco. These regions are extensively forested with Spanish fir trees and provide a home to one of the biggest populations of Spanish ibex. There are also large populations of wild cats, eagles and otters.
On the south side of Ronda is a classic Moorish Pueblos Blanco of small, cobbled alleys, and dazzling whitewashed buildings. Most of the main historical sites are on this side of the town. One highlight is the Palacio Mondragon, formerly the home of the great king Abbel Malik which combines the original Moorish structure with a later Renaissance building put up after the Christian reconquest of Spain. Also worth a visit is the church of Santa Maria whose bell tower was previously the minaret of one of the town’s many mosques
The New Bridge was constructed in the 18th century and connects the old part of Ronda with the new. It took forty years to build out of vast stones from the gorge and is almost 100 metres high. An earlier version famously collapsed killing 50 people. During the Spanish civil war a large number of communists were tossed off the bridge.
The “new” part of Ronda contains the Plaza de Toros, Spain’s oldest bullring built in 1785. For many fans it is the spiritual home of bullfighting and was the location where the modern rules were first laid down by Pedro Romero, who killed over 5,000 bulls here in the late eighteenth century. The other great bullfighter of Ronda was Antonio Ordonez, El Maestro, who fought in the twentieth century and originated the pared down, so-called “deep” manner of fighting bulls, in contrast to the more-flamboyant Seville style. Ordonez was seen frequently by Ernest Hemingway, whose Death in the Afternoon is a wildly glamourised depiction of bullfighting. Photos of Ordonez can be seen throughout the town.
The new side of town also contains the “Paseo de los Ingleses” (the “English path”), a path that runs from the Reina Victoria Hotel past the Alameda Gardens to the bullring. It bears this name due to the large numbers of English soldiers who, in the early twentieth century, would ride up here from Gibraltar to escape the heat and humidity of the coast.
