Setenil de las Bodegas

In Setenil de las Bodegas the rock is the roof. The white village in the hills of the Cádiz province grew along the gorge cut by the Guadalporcún river, also called the Trejo, and instead of building away from the cliffs its people built into them. Houses were tucked under the great overhanging ledges of the gorge walls, so that whitewashed fronts, doors and windows sit directly beneath massive brown slabs of stone, and whole streets run in a kind of half-tunnel with the cliff hanging over the pavement.

The two best-known streets show the effect from opposite sides. Cuevas del Sol, on the sunny side of the river, has cave-houses beneath the ledge with open fronts facing the light; Cuevas de la Sombra, in the shadow, lies deep under the overhang, with rock overhead for much of its length and a cool, dim atmosphere even in summer. Wandering further up the lanes, the village climbs to its old centre at around 640 m, and the contrast of white plaster and dark rock keeps reappearing at every turn.

At the top stand the remains of the Moorish fortress, a stronghold of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada with its 13th-century keep, the Torre del Homenaje. Setenil was a hard place to take: a Christian siege in 1407 failed, and the town fell only in 1484, after about fifteen days of bombardment with gunpowder artillery. A popular etymology derives the name from the Latin septem nihil, "seven times nothing", for the attempts that came to nothing, but this is tradition rather than established fact. Beside the castle stands the church of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación, built between the 15th and 17th centuries in a mixture of Gothic and Mudéjar styles.

The second half of the name recalls the vineyards planted by Christian settlers alongside the older olive and almond groves; the wine cellars that gave it lasted until phylloxera destroyed the vines in the 19th century. The historic centre has been protected as a historic-artistic ensemble since 1985.

Getting there

Setenil lies about 14 km north of Ronda, and Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP) is about 64 km away as the crow flies, rather further by road. Setenil has its own station on the Bobadilla-Algeciras railway line, and from Ronda the village is a short drive through the hills.