White Flower Of Moor Stone

“Laying on carpets of magic colours while sweet dreams closed my eyes, Naricha; my Naricha surging amongst flowers of the most incredible beauty my eyes delighted.”

ERJA Ibn Saadi NAnd Its Parador S ierra de Almijara gets its sides to Costa del Sol. There, Malaga ’s seaside gets rough. The coast, all of it, has a sharp line, a series of cliffs where waves die. The area is a rocky Nature Reserve, hard and unknown. is the passage between the provinces of Malaga and Granada.

There, still, marked its origin in the Roman age this city. In the half of the 20th Century, in 1959, five explorers reached to what was then considered a mine, and that, immediately, became the biggest treasure of the place: its cave. This finding opened a hole in the local history discovering more and more stages of unknown pre-history. The most ancient remains locate the first inhabitants in the High Palaeolithic. Those primitive men and women were followed by hundreds of generations during 25.000 years.

The cave patrimony is amazing. From most ancient scratchers and burrs discovered in the lower levels, to abundant bell-like vases, remains of the last human population, dated at the end of the year 2000 BC, there is a monumental patrimony, subject of constant studies that goes beyond the cultural limits of the different stages of Palaeolithic and Neolithic.

Those were hunters, fishermen and harvesters from Nerja amateurs of deer meat and of animal fish that they fished from the shore. Those were cold and moisty days. The cave where they found shelter also protected their fears, triumphs, feasts and first invocation moans. The diet, with the pass of years, is enlarged, making us think of a less harsh weather, a different landscape and a man that is doing his best to take advantage of nature. Pine nuts, olives, acorns and beans were already part of the prehistoric larder, together with small mammals that substitute water birds and gooses hunted in precedent periods.

This deep root of the civilization of Nerja is 750 meters away from the coast, on a mount, some 200 meters over the sea level and in the face of Sierra de Almijara, which goes down to the Alboran Sea. It is there where the Nature Reserve of cliffs is born. The Betic Mountains , created 500 millions years ago, during the Alpine orogeny, are a consequence of the clashes between the Euro-Asian and African plates.

Once the Hommo Sapiens left the cave and walks around searching, probably, for a hill where to settle the first stones of a village, traces are lost. The mythological downpour floods it all. Amongst this legend mud has survived the name of the city Nar-issa, which in Micenic language means “the place of water” and Zalia’s legend. This mythological tale tell that Ulysses fell asleep with the sing of Calipso, locating the place of these facts in the plateau known as Zalia’s Highs, closet o Nerja.

NERJA AND ITS PARADOR 1 Apart of the echoes of this Odyssey city, the evidences of the Phoenician commercial establishments (and of the Greek colonies) remain closet o the coast, raising, if so, up to Malaka, first cultural site placed on the current location of the capital of which we have historical news.

The closest Roman evidence is in Maro, where the foundations of the town called Detenta were placed. Over dust, there are still the remains of the Item Cástulo-Malaca, by the former sugar factory, at Tragalamocha, in the crossroad of the Roman via that connected Sexi (Almuñecar) with Claviclum (). Those are the beginnings of the 1st C. of our time. Romans took profit of the infrastructures of a Phoenician factory to establish a fortification from which to control their lands.

Silk’s Good Times

T he news about Narixa, Naricha or Narija, the three names the Muslim gave to it, increase in number from the 9th century on. They talked about it as a great farmhouse in which, amongst its people, women were reputed for the work they did with silk, the most demanded and paid by the merchants of the Mediterranean Sea.

Andalusia, jewel of the world, even more beautiful, sweeter and noisy bets, selling spices here and there. than Damascus , as bright as Baghdad , couple in fertility with Bujara and as firm as Cairo , thirty million inhabitants populated it in the 9th Against the extended topic of the Muslim women spending all day at Century, under the government of Al–Rahman II. Its textile industry gave their parents or with their husbands, women have works as diverse as work to 13000 workers who produced cotton, linen, wool and the wanted hairdressing, logic, architecture, singing, writing, astrology, wet nursing, silk. With in Cordoba knowledge was spread at its 3000 mosques, prostitution, waxing, mourner. They have right, once they reach majority, commerce multiplied in its outskirts and houses of knowledge and science over their real estate, with full parental or marital autonomy. It is the first increased; there they made western and eastern translations. Almeria , Califa’s Al-andalus where women is authorised to give oath and to become Malaga and Murcia bloomed with their textile activity and with their witness. famous glass and golden earthenware. Let’s match Nerja, through the bushes, in springtime: butterflies leave Nerja has its women Moroccan market, probable. Most of them speak their cocoon. Blackberry bushes grow everywhere; it is the native Arab, the dominant language. There are less women covering their face Mediterranean specie. Women go to collect their fresh leaves in the holes with veils, the thicker it is, the highest social status they enjoy. Andalusi on the walls, closet o water springs and at the gates of the city. working women walk the streets of the Medina announcing Once Persia was conquered, in the middle of the 7th C., the silk market is controlled by Muslims. Teophanes grants a Persian man, of unknown name, the transport of the cocoons from Seres to Byzantium. But, even before, according to another tradition, close to year 550, it was Emperor Justinianus who received the monks who, after three years of stay in Asia , handed, together with the secrets of their crop, the seed of these Works hidden in canes. However it was, silk is in that moment already of great industrial production in Valencia and Nerja.

The work Nerja’s women carry out, patiently at home, is slow. Splitting threads is handwork, with the help of spindles, and confection, in small looms with short combs. The result, however, is wonderful: simples to cover the head, silken shirts sew with gold and silver threads. And also some fine works of passementerie, combining silk and cotton. “Singing praises to the golden silk” in Nerja, odes a writer of the 9th C.

NERJA AND ITS PARADOR 2 Today, there are still visible remains of that long and profitable times, until when, in 1569 they are killed. Nobody survived. Women and children prior to the Christian Reconquest, which are the fortress beneath with the were sold as slaves. city extended, in the place that keeps the name Castillo Alto (High Castle), and the Andalusian flag is still green, the Omeya’s colour which was then Following this, calm times, pacific centuries. Christians build their garmented with silver and gold, an Arab sword in the centre and a verse temples; Nuestra Señora de las Angustias, dedicated to the patron saint of from Koran. the town and, later on, at the end of the 17t C., the parish of San Salvador. The neighbours are now close to half a thousand, they spread in the streets This is who poet Ahû Asbag Ibn al Arqâm described it: like Corralón Granada, el Tajillo, la Puerta del Mar y la Plaza de Cavana. Then, for less than a century, the Torre de los Guardas guards of all its “A green flag citizens. that has made of white dawn its belt puts over you a wing of delice Then, Independence War begins and this and three other coast towers for her to insure your happiness fall because of the French army. faces Napoleon’s troops and when providing you with a triumphant spirit.” denies the authority of the imposed king. The fight implies epic battles in the Serrania de , where the guerrilla and members of the army, leaded, amongst others, by Serrano Valdenebro, a reputed marine, and Ortiz de Zárate, supported by the British Gobernor of Gibraltar, carried out several incursions in the enemies’ lines, all of them unsuccessful. This Green Flag, is how the situation of the rebels in their refuge was told by Rocca: “we ate our own flesh and we drank our blood, in this war without glory to amend Black Flag the injustice of the cause for which we fought”.

N erja does not fight against the Christian Empire in the due moment, but it surrenders without battle to the troops of King Ferdinand the Catholic. In exchange, as a prize to its loyalty, the citizens keep their properties, their lands, the houses in which their children were born, their shops. But those are bad times, the expulsion of the Muslims, plus the continuous assaults of the pirates throughout the coast, devastate Nerja. Doña Juana invites the Christian to move there and stay in the abandoned houses, granting to them also being free of taxes and of other “services, levies or impositions”.

Also, to renew the population of this new born came men and women from other countries; people taken away from their Asian lands, to serve the king of Persia that requested the music and sings to amuse his people. Of that total of 12.000 zotl, to which the historian Hazma de Hispaham makes reference, after migrating through Armenia to the Dardanelles coasts, and the Bosporus, from where, facing the Turkish invasion, they escape to Western Anatolia, and from there to the North of the Danube, to Rumanian lands of Valakia and Moldavia, some of them got to Al- Andalus. In fact, it is during this last third of the 15th C. when gypsies migrated from the Adriatic to Spain and Italy , enriching their dominating cultures. From the links found between the Christian Andalusian party singing is born which, already in the 17th C., acquires the clear flamenco shape. The municipal independency arrives at the beginning of the 19th C., after having achieved a ruling, consisting in two majors, three deputies and Reborn from its ashes, the small town of Nerja begins to acquire defence a syndic authority. against the pirates, manpower with which to work in the land, men and women that have children, new generations. We make reference to a population, in the times of the Catholic Kings, that is not of more than a hundred people, piling up close to the defences and that got to arrive to the nearby town of Irigiliana . There, in its hieratical mount, Moorish diaspora is bloody and of a cruelty impossible to hide. The Moors that escape from the Alpujarras and from other points of Andalusia, (baptised Moors) go to find shelter in this high, which they turn into a bastion, in guerrilla against the authority that forbids them to speak their mother language. The hill shelters seven thousands Moors, who lived in families,

NERJA AND ITS PARADOR 3 Walking Around Nerja From here, how may pirate ships were seen approaching, and how many others with textile goods, in the splendour years of silk, sugar and how N many others, coming and going sea inside, how much calm, how furious the erja is located in the eastern demarcation of Malaga called access of spirit was! The most wanted beach, virgin and fine is also the Axarquia, surrounded by coast and mountains, and shares some most accessible and close: Playa Burriana. limits with Granada . In its cliffs and steep slopes the stories of thieves and of thousand battles take place, places where they assaulted the caravans After a bath, if the traveller wants to follow us, you should be warned full of goods that went full from the Alhambra . These cliffs are the same that we are going to suffer the sun of the mountains as well as the moist of where the guerrilla and maquis face and battle the rebel troops during the the dark caves, because there is where we are going, but with a first stop at Civil War of 1936. the place found in our way: the neighbour municipality of Maro.

The Parador, hanging from a cliff, touches the horizon and the green It is just three kilometres away, on the exit of the N 340. What is that we forest of its gardens with the brave wind of the sea. The Costa del Sol see! If my eyes do not betray me, I would say it is an aqueduct. In fact, it is offers the traveller that lodges here the best of beaches. The view from the the bridge of Águila, a tombstone in engineering that let us pass over a coast line leads to Nerja, with all the tops at the same height; white, closet precipice of the mountain range. The aqueduct was built close to 1880 by o he sea, between palm tress, like thrown to the sea by a mother try to Francisco Cantarero Martín, son of a well-known family of Nerja, with the teach to swim , but this mountains are also its bodyguard. design of Rafael Claves. It rises over four bank arches of brick and mortar.

Once in town, the traveller will have an easy task when looking for the Over the top of the aqueduct runs the water with a depth of 65 charms of this city without missing any of them. The most common thing, centimetres , at an approximate speed of 100 litres per second. The and so is recommended by urban logic, is getting to plaza Cavana, the weathervane, a double-headed eagle, Carlos’ V style, points, in the top of a real heart of Nerja, and then continue the road. The visitor will return to pinnacle, the eastern wind chased between stone walls. Its name, however, the place to have a cold drink at the “terrazas”. Around the square the has nothing to do with the weathervane but, as the eldest of the town original Nerja spreads; the most ancient to be traced by the houses and the remember, with the eagle nests that were on the walls before the streets Lima, Filigrana, San Miguel and Castilla Pérez. This flat walk of construction of the aqueduct. narrow streets, without any monumental volume that hinders the calm walk of the traveller and with no other distraction than the flower pot on a The traveller has doubts; it is even possible to think it is nonsense to window, the kid playing or laundry hang to dry from the white windows. have this in this place. The village of Mar, which these lands are a part of, This is your first walk, how sweet! it a very old town, with presence already stated in the Phoenician and Roman history, and, this is the explanation, a sugar factory that was born Suddenly, the foreigner finds the Church of El Salvador , the biggest in the 16th C. The production increased, the original sugar cane from India temple of the town, built in the 17th C. A church that, despite it has been and China that the Arabs brought in the 10th C. was exported from the quite restored, it still has its Muslim strength beating in the Baroque customs of Playa Burrianas to Europe; Here is where the aqueduct fits, reforms that followed. In front of it, you have the City Hall that includes a providing them with the necessary water by a “sugar factory and other room to enjoy the paintings of local artists (and of foreign painters caught buildings”. by the landscape): streets, marinas, sundown trapped as gifts, like sounding memories of a place that touch the heart of the new-arrived. The nearby landscape of this mountain range of Tejada runs through dry cliffs that are crossed by sudden waters of unpredictable and short run that Maybe the most prolific Malaga ’s artist of the last years may have been, provides to the mountains a fresh and vital gesture. From the rural district in painting, Moreno Villa, at the time poet and son of the exile in Mexico. of Nerja that is Maro, close to the Mediterranean Highway , we have the He wrote: star of sightseeing, the great temple, the chapel and the cave of caves: the Cave of Nerja. “I hate music but this “cante jondo”... this “copla” that is mine since I was born, this “copla” that cries singing and being sung moaning, it is my blood: it is called loneliness.”

The natural trend of the town promotes in the walker moving toward the coast, to the Mediterranean puzzling, which is glanced from the “Balcony of Europe”, at the end of the Paseo with the same name. The name, it is said, was suggested by King Alfonso XII, when he admired from this point the North hidden during a visit he made in December 1884, when an earthquake brought down a half of the city.

NERJA AND ITS PARADOR 4 The information provided by this living museum (with twenty five The curious weather of the area, already suffered by the walker, is the thousand years of pre-history), in the shape of a rock patrimony is huge. result of the efficient soothing and moisturizing effect of the Sea of Thus, we recommend to the visitor that before beginning the trip to the Alboran , under the warmest and driest part of the province. cave, he better read and become conscious of what he is going to see, directing, then, to the Centre of Interpretation of the Caves. Even if the doubtless main character of this landscape scene is the rocky stage, its crashed line of the quaternary and the demolishing action of the We will just highlight the puzzling beauty of the caves, with domes of sea and of the human hand, here there is a wide fauna and flora range of more that 60 meters of height, waters talking in the dark, and mazes of increasing perfume and colour, adapted to the sides of the mountain, the silicicles created drop by drops. All of their rooms and there are a lot (a shelters of the beaches, the heights that scratch the sky at 2000 meters kilometre, more or less), ooze a mysterious magnetism, cosy and full of high, the cliffs, rivers and sands. imagination. The traveller shall try not to miss, during the season, the concerts of the Dance and Music Festival that is organised each year in Away from the sea, carobs, oaks, damsons and perfumed bushes of the Cascade Room. lavender, thyme that are shelter and food for chameleons, eagles, falcons and other sea birds that get there. By the water goldmosses, white rosemary, thyme and sea persil... There, getting wet, red, green and brown seaweeds, golden anemone, seabream, rainbow fish, squids and octopuses living in the sea meadows. The traveller, amateur of diving, shall request a permit to discover this submarine paradise because it is forbidden to go under without permission.

What we all can reach to are the beaches of Costa del Sol which, in this case, we invite you to visit backwards, this is, towards Malaga . The main points of interests are: Torre del Mar, after Torrox, and Rincón de la Victoria. Torre, it is written in its name, is a crowd of towers, broken or ruined watchtowers from ages of the pirates. Very close, towards inland, the traveller shall have a go for the town of Vélez-Málaga, of which Torre is part of the municipality. Its past goes back to the Phoenician times and there are also Roman and Arab remains. From its origin it has had important roles in Excursion: From The history, sometimes bloody. However, today it is a happy town and it is well Summits To The Depths provided with tourism services.

Of The Earth Back on the road, going south, one beach after the other, we get to the reputed Rincón de la Victoria. There is where local tourism crowds, passionate for the “chiringuitos”, the soft breeze, Grilled Clams and T he most tempting route to take, from this point where we are, “Victoriano” Style Anchovies. To visit the coast, the jewel of the by he Mediterranean, is following the Costa del Sol down or crown, the traveller should pay attention to the signals that lead there, Costa del Sol up. So, let’s put our towels in the car (and a good pair of after Moral bay. boots, if you decide to walk mountain up, route we will describe later). At Rincón de la Victoria we find the mysterious Cueva del Tesoro, The Natural Area of the Cliffs of Maro is the closest to the name that comes from a legend that says that, in the 12th C., the emperor traveller. You will not use the car a lot, but, in spite, the run, through of the Almoravids, Tasufín ibn Alí, ordered to hide there a huge treasure. narrow roads and high steps requests resistance to hot weather and strong Since, there have been a lot of studies, myths and legends that began then legs. The area is located in the limits of Malaga and Granada . It runs but that are still present, despite the useless search of its last owner, throughout 12 kilometres , parallel to the coast, limiting to the north with Cristobal Medina, the treasure has not yet been found. route N-340. This same route is the one that leads to Almuñecar. There is still another bunch of caves throughout the province of The cliffs and rock depths that create this site are the rasping breath of Malaga: Belda, de los Murciélagos, de Doña Trinidad, all of them the Sierra Almijara, created to the south of the Betic mountain range, subject of tales but none of them as interesting as this of del Tesoro. some half a thousand million years ago. The group to which the traveller The day does no leave time to do nothing more but excursion linked to approaches is a track of colour and rocks that breaks over the clear waters this one. From there you can try the “Avocado Route” towards of the coast. The singularity of its layers makes that the most ancient and and full of plantations of this tropical fruit. But we better metamorphic materials are those that we can clearly see over the newest keep this for some other day. It is time to get back home, to sit to table, ones. enjoy the meal and give the body its well deserved rest.

NERJA AND ITS PARADOR 5 About fish, it is typical from the “chiringuitos” at the beach, Sardine “Espetos” and Anchovies, Red Mullets, Calamari, Small Squids, Soles and Gobies all of them fried and served together. Another high quality sea dish is Paprika with Fish and Clams, quiet attractive because it is cooked inside of a pumpkin. Groceries and green vegetables are always present in Nerja’s food, in salads or cooked, boiled or as accompaniment to meats, etc. The most remarkable in this farm tradition is the presence of tropical exotic fruits like Avocado or Custard Apple.

A very common dish of the town you are visiting is the Avocado Salad with Shrimps, Onion, Egg, Golf Sauce and Caviar. About custard apple, the production in Malaga is the biggest of the world.

Yet to desserts, with the touchable Arab inheritance, will be of your special delight, to the amateurs of the people’s bakery, Sweet Potato, boiled with honey, and the “Torta Sanjuanera”, made with wheat flour, with oil, sugar and “Matalahuga”. Clear As A Grape, THE SECRET RECIPE Strong As An Olive MAIMONES APÓCRIFOS

“Maimón” is the name given to monkeys and also, here in Andalusia to A the soup: the “maimones” we recommend do not have any relation with ndalusian cuisine in Nerja, reputed and sweet, is bathe in the the Jew philosophy of the wise saint, it is simple, a spoon dish very deep sea of Olive Oil; an oil of course, magnificent and as well-known as appreciated in Axarquía. that from Jaen but completely different. The particularity of this liquid gold where both fish and vegetable or meat get bath has its base in olives. Ingredients: 2 eggs, 5 garlic cloves (red, if possible), olive oil (a tenth of The main olive, in this and other nearby towns, is alchemy mixing the a litre), less than a half a kilo of bread of the precedent day, muscat olives of varieties like Hojiblnca with that of Vélez-Málaga, which gives a grapes (demand), water and a bit of salt. fruity oil, lacking sour taste, with a composition of well balanced acids. The receipt that is like a garlic soup without the Castilian austerity, An good entry is Gazpacho, but, watch out, it has nothing to do with begins cutting the bread in slices, as thin as possible. Then, we will do the the La Mancha version. AndalusianGazpacho is a succulent dish full of same with the garlic, frying them without making them too golden. Now, dices: tomato, pepper, onion, boiled egg, fried bread, ham... preferably cut we pour water and salt. In the stew, cooked but not boiling, we put the into small dices. There is also the hot variety, named “Gazpachuelo” whipped eggs until cooked. The dish is served in the boiler together with and the delicatessen named ajoblanco that is garnished with grapes. peeled and seeded grapes.

Talking about grapes, here the muscat variety has its empire, and it is suitable to remark that Nerja and the nearby towns is the cradle of the typical Malaga ’s sweet wine, just in case the traveller wants to taste it. A wonderful wine, perfect in all its varieties, achieved in a process that uses four kilos of grapes per bottle of wine and that, once processed, spends years in French oak barrels.

There are people that go for Sweet Malaga with Fried Fish, or may with pastries for coffee. They combine red wine with main and winter Parador de Nerja dished, like “Migas” or Game that is cooked both fried or with almond sauce, because Nerja is full of almond trees. These are also present in C/Almuñécar, 8. 29780 Málaga receipts like the typical almond soup, with garlic, oil and salt. Tel.: 95 252 00 50 - Fax: 95 252 19 97 e-mail: [email protected] Reservation Center

Requena, 3. 28013 Madrid (España) Tel.: 902 54 79 79 - Fax: 902 52 54 32 www.parador.es / e-mail: [email protected]

Text: Miguel García Sánchez Design: Fernando Aznar

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