Valley of the Genal (Malaga)

The rampart walk has been always the natural step of the Strait of Gibraltar to the peninsula, for what all the peoples that have entered Spain the South have followed this route of trip. The travelers and painters of the 19th century raised it to the category of legend. The British writer Richard Ford, with romantic exaggeration, was preparing his compatriots on the dangers of this way become infected with smugglers and bandits.

His more famous section passes close to the bed of the river Genal, between Gaucín and You Catch, these in turn joined by a communication named Road Landscape painter, call like that for elements of construction used, with excellent viewing-points towards the valley.

Gustavo Doré realized a couple of portraits towards half of the 19th century of the types that one could be in the rampart walk. He was zone apparently controlled by smugglers and bandits, but neither the muleteers nor the military men nor the tourists should have felt intimidated by these evil-doers, because numerous texts of the epoch indicate that they were many those who were crossing to diary, astride or afoot, the way in one or another sense. In Gaucín’s sale there stayed the first travelers, english men almost always, and between them many famous artists.

CASTLE WITH HISTORY Gaucín was at the time, and it continues it being now, the most important villageof the valley. From his castle, a fortress inespugnable, it is possible to contemplate the Rock of Gibraltar and the African coast with an amazing clarity. There he died in 1309, on having tried to suffocate a Moslem revolt, Guzmán Well, famously for leading the heroic defense of Tariff in the year 1293.

The air of the coast comes up to Gaucín and smooths the rigors of these mountains astride between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. The village is precious and beautiful placed concerning the castle, his feet, being unhooked on the mountain opposite to the river Genal, whose riverbed spies hundreds of meters down below, in his last section, up to his river mouth, foreigners have chosen it as place of residence. To the south of Gaucín, to scanty kilometres direction to Algeciras.

Leisure and amusement, AMAZING DIZZINESS The landscape is spectacular, sinuous, full of curves, of slopes, of changes of color and of vegetation. Close to the river, the gardens, orange trees, pomegranates, and many zones without cultivating, left, with plants that grow of wild form. Also they can turn extensive groves of evergreen oaks, meadows, pines, varied forests and to reach the highest part of the road, concerning Catch You, stout bare mountains tamed by an implacable wind, which in his days of rage, turns out to be terrible.

Catch you, Benarrabá, Algatocín, Jubrique, Guenalguacil, Benalauría, Benadalid and Gaucín, they shape the Consortium Fence of the Genal. All these villages appear between the nicest of Andalusia. The simple elements of the rural architecture of the region, they are kept inaltered. Algatocín placed as Gaucín next to the road, being left to fall down for a respectable hanging mountain below , he turns out to be distinguished by a curious church of bluish dome that, at least to the eyes of the lay person, certain guard oriental air. Benarrabá and Benalauría remain sunk close to the road, close to the river, and to come up to them is necessary to get down for paths roads full of curls and with slopes of dizziness. From the high thing, his emplacement produces amazement.

In Benalauría, very developed village turísticamente together with Gaucín, there is an interesting Ethnographic Museum that plans a brief tour for the forms of life and production of the Mountainous country. From Algatocín it divides a route that leads the Costa del Sol across the Royal ones of Vermilion Saw. The one who has time must know this magnificent route. To few Algatocín’s kilometres, for this road landscape painter, there are situated Jubrique and Genalguacil, precious villages nailed in a humid place, of exuberant nature. The Genalguacil they have come celebrating in the last years a few meetings of plastic artists who have left in the village a series of paintings and sculptures of great value.

SWEET CRAFTS Between the monuments of the zone it is necessary to distinguish the remains of a tower of Arabic times llamda today from the Santa Cruz, in Catch You; Benadalid’s cemetery, which one finds inside the enclosure of an old Arabic castle, the Town hall of Benalauría, of the 18th century, you change parochial churches raised between the XVIth and XVIIIth centuries, which guard some artistic objects of value. From the tourist point of view, the Valley of the Genal presents an enviable panorama. It possesses numerous and precious rural houses and farmhouses, good restaurants.