Spain: Day 9

June 18th, 2012

We took a day trip to Rhonda.  It is located about 100 kilometres (62 mi) west of the city of Málaga. The drive included incredibly windy, steep roads.  Its population is approximately 35,000.

Puente Neuvo

Ronda's 'new bridge' reaches across the 98m Tajo gorge. The bridge bisects Ronda into new town and old. The project was first proposed by King Felipe V in 1735, to improve an earlier and impossibly steep 16 th century bridge, the Puente Viejo. Parts of the span column interiors were used as a prison and, later, as a bar, but are now a museum. It is said that, during the Civil War, that captives were sometimes dispatched from the balconied windows to the rocks below.

Many Moorish towns and villages wasted away after the Christians put the final seal on the reconquest. Ronda was always too important for that.  Moorish buildings that had remained intact and appeared likely to stay that way barring deliberate demolition were simply commandeered and adapted by the incoming Christians.This was not the first attempt to build such a bridge. Records disagree on the actual dates, but in the early 1730s, one was knocked together in just eight months by Juan Camacho and José Garcia. Their hastily constructed and nail-bitingly perilous structure survived for only six years before collapsing with the loss of around fifty lives.Construction took 42 years, and the Puente Nuevo was finally ready for use in 1793.

We ate our mid-day meal on the balcony of one of those buildings! 

The Old Bridge

In Ronda, there is a bullfighting ring.  Completed in 1784, it is one of the oldest in Spain.

Nowadays, it is preserved and only used once a year for a special bullfight “corrida”. For the rest of the year, visitors can walk round the bullring itself, the stables and some backstage areas and study the history of bullfighting in the special museum.