We continued our road trip in Southern Spain now to visit some of the White towns of Andalusia. The White Towns of Andalusia, (or "Pueblos Blancos"), are a series of whitewashed towns and large villages in the northern part of the provinces of Cádiz and Málaga in southern Spain, mostly within the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park. All of the villages are characterized by whitewashed walls and red or brown tiled roofs. They also commonly present narrow alleyways, steep earrings, lookouts, and town squares with a church and town hall. We started our road trip in direction to Zahara de la Sierra. Zahara de la Sierra is a municipality in the province of Cádiz is perched on a mountain, overlooking a valley and a man-made lake formed by the dam that must be driven over to access the town.
The town was originally a Moorish outpost, overlooking the valley. Due to its position between Ronda and Seville, it was a perfect site for a castle to be built to serve as a fortress in case of attack. The remains of the Moorish castle still exist. It was ruled by Arabs until 1407. It was recaptured by the Emirate of Granada in 1481. We continued to the village of Grazalema which is located in a high valley over 800m in the Sierra del Endrinal and dominated by the magnificent rocky outcrop known as Peñon Grande. The park is a vast protected area of rugged limestone mountains, which are famous for being the rainiest place in Spain. Finally, we headed towards Setenil de las Bodegas where around 3,000 inhabitants are living quite literally under a rock! Setenil de las Bodegas is one of the most unique pueblos blancos (white villages) in Andalusia. The natural caves of Setenil turned out to be ideal living quarters because rather than needing to build entire houses to keep out the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter, all they needed to build was a facade. Most of the caves themselves have been inhabited since the Stone Age (12,000 years ago) but it was only when the Moors arrived in the 8th century that a larger town really took off around them. Setenil, from the latin words "septem nihil"( “seven times no”), refers to the seven times the Catholic rulers tried to take back the territory from the Moors! ‘Solid as a rock’ Setenil (unavoidable pun) later began using the cool areas under the rock to store all kinds of local produce in large storerooms, which is how the town earned the second part of the name, “bodegas“, meaning ‘warehouse’ in Spanish. CHEERS!
