Nerja and Frigiliana - Moors, Civil War and the Costa (April 2015)

 NERJA AND FRIGLIANA – MOORS, CIVIL WAR AND THE  “COSTA”

When someone offers the opinion that a particular Spanish town on the South coast (Costa del Sol) is “unspoilt”, there must always be implied the qualification “relatively”. The next question is, “relative to what?”. Large swathes of that coastline are hideous.

FRIGILIANA AND THE THREE CULTURES

FRIGILIANA AND THE “ THREE CULTURES”

Below the bus stand in Frigiliana, in the road beside the very convenient public conveniences, is a mini roundabout consisting of a small decorated edifice. The decorations are reliefs of the Cross, Crescent and Star of the three Abrahamic religions. The motifs are a symbol of Frigiliana’s claim to celebrate the “Three Cultlures” of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The village’s main festival in high summer is called the Festival of Three Cultures. It was instituted in the remote past (2006) and appears to consist of a three day-and-night long street party, with lots of “3C” food and drink and lots of entertainers dressing up in 3C costumes.

One may well be puzzled by this imagery. What has Frigiliana got to do with Islam, Judaism and Christianity, all in tandem? The answer, I think, is “very little”, although the village is indeed the site of one of the battles between Islamic and Christian foes, of which more below.

RIO CHILLAR

RIO CHILLAR -  NERJA to FRIGILIANA

The course of the Rio Chillar (“course” being a neutral term which does not necessarily imply the presence of water) marks a definite boundary as it passes Nerja. At the sea or southern end, it hems in the urban development of Nerja itself; and is cossetted in an artificial channel with walkways on either side. Further north, the Chillar gets more practical – on the town or eastern side there is a dusty carpark and builders’ merchants, along a pitted unmade road. On the western side, accessed by various  fords and rickety footbridges, are semi-rural arable plots and cottages.

A little further up, there is the overwhelming and ugly high concrete viaduct of the coastal motorway, under which one does not linger (not least because of worries about the quality of the concrete).

Above the motorway, the Chillar soon has a junction with its tributary, the Rio Higueron.  This river (often dry) comes down the gorge which borders the eastern flank of Frigiliana. If you turn up it, you pass more agricultural plots and eventually  reach a track. This goes up to the hamlet of La Molinetta, an old mill complex which stands on the Nerja-Frigiliana road where it takes its last steep bend before reaching Frigiliana.

If you suffer from vertigo you should leave the river valley here. There is a shortcut footpath from La Molinetta to the outskirts of Frigiliana which avoids most of the road.

Otherwise, pressing on along the Higueron means passing through one of the river’s  cahores, or canyons, which create (when there is plentiful water) a fast and challengingly deeper flow. An artificial path consisting of steep sideless stairs and canyon-wall ledges has been made to help walkers to negotiate this obstacle. It is somewhat vertigo-inducing, especially the stairs, which many prefer to descend on their bottoms (if coming down from Frigiliana). If you so suffer, but your luck is in, perhaps you will find no water, and can find a way to scramble down the large boulders, if descending. If you you are going up, I think the stairs need to be taken; but the ascending vertigo is far less!

If you ignore the Higueron junction and continue to proceed north east up the Chillar, you soon come to a place where a road descends to the river by a small modern industrial building, next to which is a carpark. Beyond this point the Pinto hill rears up. It is the beginning of the sierra heights, and is the feature which divides the two rivers. You are now at the mouth of the steep Chillar valley. However, it is at this point very wide; made wider because the side of the Pinto has ben gouged by large-scale quarrying. The river here, in the absence of heavy rain or melting snow, is a collection of effortful trickles.

The real beauty  of the Chillar lies just ahead, where the valley narrows to create gorges which must be waded through. Also, high on the eastern side, an acqueia (stone-made water channel) snakes along the valley/gorge. This you can allegedly walk along (but not I…).

[Work/walk in progress]

April 2015

NERJA FEBRUARY 1937

NERJA: FEBRUARY 1937

On 9^th February 1937, Italian troops, leading the Nationalist forces approaching from Malaga, entered Nerja, their motorcycle outriders roaring down the Calle Pintada. Thus ended the local manifestation of the Republic, for Nerja had been a Republican-held town until that day.

It seems that Nerja was one of countless towns and villages across Spain where similar events unfolded from the outset of the Nationalist uprising in July 1936. There was a leftwing backlash against people perceived to be Nationalists or their sympathisers-  especially clerics, landowners and professionals. In Nerja, a truck-load of anarchist militiamen from Malaga came over to help matters along – several alleged right-wingers, including the local priest (whose church had been ransacked), were taken to the Rio Seco to the west of Playazo beach, and shot.

The communist mayor of Nerja, elected in August 1936, tried to calm these inflamed and murderous tendencies. But sporadic assassinations continued.

When Malaga fell in early February (the subject of an earlier post on this site), the retreating Republican troops temporarily established their headquarters in Nerja (for a matter of days). This brought air attacks – machine guns and bombs, including at the junction of Calles Pintada and Carabeo.

Republican forces and much of local population, turned refugees, were soon in full flight along the coast road (N 340) towards Almeria. This exodus, which started from Malaga and gathered people as it went, is notorious for the pitiless and indiscriminate bombing, machine-gunning and naval shelling of the wretched columns.

One objective of the Nationalists was the destruction of bridges along the road, to slow the Republican retreat. One such bridge was (and still is) the one in the barranco gorge between Nerja and Maro, a couple of kilometers or so to the east. The task of destroying it was given to Nationalist naval forces. They couldn’t see the bridge, as it is built well down below the lip of the gorge. What they could see was the high, proud and elaborate profile of the Aquila Aqueduct further up the gorge. This C19 construction, built in classical style (and still aqueducting today) the Nationalist warships mistook for the road bridge, and their shells were aimed accordingly. Thus the fleeing Republicans and refugees were granted precious time to cross the actual bridge. (The nationalists realised their mistake at last when water was observed to be pouring out of the damaged aqueduct.)

Taken by the Nationalist, Nerja endured the usual bloody purges of leftists and liberals. The cinema was the place for summary trials; the cemetery the place for summary and quasi-judicial executions.

The aforementioned communist mayor of Nerja somehow escaped death. Two lengthy spells of imprisonment sandwiched time spent as a guerrilla in the Sierra. He outlived Franco.

This narrative is taken from a Spanish book, “100 Anos  de Nerja en Fotos”  by a local historian, Pablo Rojo Platero. What he writes rings true and is consistent with the overall history of the Civil War in the Malaga area.

The fact that Nerja was in Republican control until February 1937 unfortunately casts doubt Laurie Lee’s account of the War as witnessed by him in Almunecar, just up the coast to the east of Nerja ( the final pages of“As I walked Out One Midsummer’s Morning”). There can have been no clashes with “Nationalist militias” occupying Nerja in the autumn of 1936. There can have been no mistaken bombardment of Almunecar by Republican warships trying to strike Nerja.

April 2015

WALKING BEHIND NERJA

THE NATIONAL PARK BEHIND NERJA

I have (at the time of writing this in the early days of April 2015) been on only relatively short excursions into the vast National Park (strictly speaking Parque Natural), which includes the Sierras of Tejeda and Almijara.

 I have written about walking from Frigiliana in past posts. One thing I noted was that Frigiliana sits on the border of the Park – so that the unprotected countryside to the south and west is scattered with modern settlements, built here and there with not detectable planning influence; and Frigiliana itself displays its own “Costa” swathe of dense apartment bulidings on the edge of the Higueron gorge, where the Park starts. To the north and east, however, there is no new building and the prospect is mountainous, green and wild.

The demarcation between Costa and Park is also very pronounced inland from Maro, an eastern satellite village of Nerja nestling, if that is the right word, between the coastal cliffs and the motorway.

From Maro, via a grim tunnel under the motorway, you rapidly leave a few small farm buildings behind and ascend into the Park up a barranco – a dry river bed. This is a stony, vegetation-shrouded ascent, which gets steeper and steeper as the Sierra foothills are reached. On a ridge some 600 meters up, next to a rural ruin, you look back towards the coast over green and rocky slopes and cliffs. The dense white buildings of Nerja are in view, along  with the smaller urban patch of Maro.

The urbanisation (or, literally, the “urbanizaciones” , the villa suburbs) are halted and hemmed in by the Park. From the your perspective on the ridge, you can imagine a giant knife slicing off the riband of coastal development, leaving nothing but wild green hills falling away to the sea. This is, no doubt, much how the landscape appeared until recent years.

Turning away from the Costa and daydreams of geo-engineering, the view is one of mountains. A series of ranges march northward with increasing heights. Between are steep valleys, some glacial and dry, others containing rivers.

From the particular ridge above Maro just described, there is a lumpy path down to one of glacial valleys, where the wildness is somewhat abated by a wide track, inviting to cars, which leads up to a well-appointed picnic area. Downhill, it is an easy stroll of a few kilometers to the Caves of Nerja and the bus stop. This is probably the direction you’ll turn if you have just come the way I have described, completing a circuit of just under four hours.

Uphill, a short distance past the picnic area, the car-friendly track ends at a ridge, from which the view is a spectacular mix of green valleys and ridges in the foreground and grim-ish bare peaks further back.

The immediate valley is the deep cut of the Rio Chillar, which eventually finds it way to the sea at Nerja, not always accompanied by any water at that end. Beyond are a couple of steep ridges and then, at this point out of sight, the not quite so deep but seemingly more sheer and rocky gorge of the Rio Higueron, above which stands Frigiliana.

The walk across to Frigiliana ( or vice versa) follows the long distance Gran Senda de Malaga ( which be rendered as the “Great Malaga Trail”)- basically, for this section, an old mule track. It has recently been thoroughly way-marked with new red and white wooden signs and the occasional painted mark. So it is perfectly possible to walk it unguided, if suitably equipped for the weather conditions and the often steep and stony path (walkers do get lost in the hills, sometimes with tragic results; there is a risk in some places of taking a path which proves not to be a path or of just getting disorientated among the numerous ridges and ravines). If starting or ending at the Caves, the Frigiliana walk will take most people at least six hours, allowing for rest and meal stops.

But if you are only an occasional walker of rough hill country tracks, you might feel more relaxed about your first traverse if you join a guided group. A calming guide with a steadying hand is especially helpful when crossing the Rio Chillar. Where the path comes down and, on the other side, goes up, the river, although not wide, is rocky and drops over several short, sharp levels. Crossing with dry feet is a precarious affair of hopping from boulder to boulder, with immersion certain to befall any walker who loses his or her footing (give the guide your phone before hopping off).

For myself, I think that on future walks I’ll wade and eat lunch while drying off on the other side.

Between the Rios Chillar and Higueron, the path goes over a couple of ridges and around the heads of valleys below various of the lower summits of the Almijara. The slopes are covered in scratchy scrubland plants, which provide no shade but would, at the expense of laceration, prevent much of a fall if you were to slip off the path (a possibility, in places, for the clumsy walker).

Either end of the walk between Frigiliana and the Caves is fairly easy. Towards the Caves, there is the vehicle track mentioned, or you can descend into the parallel barranco for much of the way for a pleasant walk along its narrow and impressive canyon. On the approach to Frigiliana, the wonderful gorge of the Higueron is always uplifting. Most of the time its bed is basically a wide and dry stony track. But after heavy rain you are reminded that it is, indeed, a Rio. A broad shallow stream takes over, necessitating that you end your walk with a lot of hopping from side to side (but not of the immersion-threatening kind).

April 2015