Ruta de los Pueblos Blancos
My heart often takes me to Spain, where I probably lived a past life. If there is a region that I prefer, that’s just Andalusia. A land of stories and cultures intertwined between the Christian one and especially the Moorish one that left its indelible imprints after a centuries-old domination.
Olvera
The journey I would like to drag you on started right from Granada, leafing through a local tourist guide stored in a wicker basket, which was on the floor of one of the main souvenir shops of the city. It seemed placed there on purpose to make my eyes fall into it during a boring wait. It was a real revelation, thanks to the intriguing title, which immediately led me to a hasty reading, surrending to the impatience of curiosity. The “Ruta de los Pueblos Blancos” (the road of the white villages) instantly became an unmissable destination for me because it had, more than any other, the power of discovering something secret, to capture the essence of this land. At the same time, I felt it as a personal exploration, as if it were an unconscious return to a place from my childhood.
Ronda
Ronda
The Ponte Nuevo (New Bridge) is the core of the city, not only because it joins its ancient moorish part with the new one. It is in fact the most spectacular point, on the El Tajo gorge that offers a magnificent panorama from above besides to the enchanting view directly on the bed of the Guadalevin river from the Casa del Rey Moro (House of the Moorish King). Its velvety shades flood your eyes with blue and green. You can admire its grandeur, observing from below its arches that blend chromatically with the rock. The view of the valley from the local Mirador (classy hotels chain created from historic buildings) is no less spectacular, one of the best in all of Spain.
Bullfighting is a constant presence in the history and life of Ronda, which hosts one of the oldest bullrings.
The severed heads of bulls visible everywhere, depicted on national flags and even hanging embalmed on the walls of the most traditional restaurants, are the macabre confirmation of this
Leaving the city, cork oaks accompany you along the path, often interrupted by short stops to admire the sculptural shapes of their barked trunks and the glowing silvery leaves on their sturdy, twisted branches.
The sweetness of the curved hills is the score of a music that you would never want to stop, starting over again like a broken record. Many of them dotted with citrus and olive groves, others painted by the green of the regrowth of crop rotation. Small farmhouses isolated like buoys in the middle of expanses of land, seems to be floating along their curvilinear profiles.
Olvera
Heding to north, you can see Olvera from afar due to its magnificience, sealed by its church standing on the hill top from which the white houses cluster falls down like an ice cream. Its sloping streets offer interesting glimpses of the typical Andalusian urban architecture, made of black bars on yellow bordered windows, embedded in the white walls. A chromatic trilogy repeated endlessly with the countless shapes.
The authentic pearl of the circuit is located a short distance away: Setenil de las Bodegas. Its name comes from the seven times attempts to free it from the Moors. You are almost scared to see it so well embedded inro the tuff rock, such to seem swallowed up. Rows of houses carved out of the rock niches, vaguely remember Matera, with the chromatic difference of the white that contrasts against the yellow of the tuff and the overlying green in some places. It looks like a Dante’s circle, developed downwards.
The return journey toward south passes through Algodonales for an unmissable stop in Zahara de la Sierra.
Zahara de la Sierra
Zahara is like a large white terrace overlooking the Embalse de Gastor, an artificial reservoir of turquoise waters with so glossy shades such to seem as fake as the ponds in nativity scenes. You are approaching the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park that you can observe from the top of the Puerto de las Palomas pass, just above the city from which it takes name.
That park is a natural reserve of vegetation thriveing in the arid rock, with discrete blooms but with eye-catching colors. The yellow of the wild broom stains the long green expanses populated by goats into the wild. You can visit it by car through a circular route along which you will encounter other minor white villages, such as Ubrique and Benaocaz, to arrive at the final destination after the junction at El Bosque.
Then you reach Arcos de la Frontera, just after driving along riped cereals fields (in May) caressed by the strong wind that gives iridescent hues to a yellow sea, stained by the silver green of the cork oaks sprouting anywhere like sentinels.
Its tuff spur towers over the plateau and appears from afar, hiding its white houses clinging to its summit above the golden crust facing west.
Arcos de la Frontera
The rising up to the city is a constant emotion, that reaches its peak with the panoramic views from the terrace of the main square and during the gymkhana between the houses and the craft shops. A continuous game of perspectives between the most characteristic urban elements and the colorful bucolic background or even with the appearance of Jacaranda flowers, that you will find widespread moving to Jerez de la Frontera, completely dressed in its purple color.
This is the discreet, silent Spain that lives on work and traditions, far from the torcida of the crowded Ramblas of Barcelona and the monumental buildings of Madrid. This is the beating heart of Spain. The heart of the heart. My heart.
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