Salobrenia re-visited in detail

Another fiercely hot day. We thought about driving to Granada but couldn't face the prospect of it being even hotter inland. So, we drove along the A7 Autovia to Salobrenia to take a look at the old hill town, surmounted by a tenth century moorish castillo. It wasn't easy to find a place to park as it's a busy holiday resort, but eventually we found a place as shops were shutting for lunch. We climbed the hill and discovered the pleasant Plaza del Ajuntamiento with a modern bronze water fountain outside the restaurant La Botica where we ate a delicious lunch in a shady place with a cool breeze to make a hot day most bearable.

Afterwards I climbed up to the castillo, which was closed, being currently under restoration. The streets around and leading up to it, however, have been given a make-over. The inhabited area below the walls contains narrow streets and small houses, some of which may well be quite ancient. It's called las faldas de el castillo, the skirts of the castle. 

The views from the edge of the cliff on which the castle is located, across the sea plain are spectacular. The last cane sugar refinery in Europe, the Azucarera de Guadalfeo, was in operation down there in nearby La Caleta de Salobrenia until 2006. It's hard to imagine how industrialised this area once was, until you glimpse brick built factory chimney stacks, preserved as artifacts, or the core of a defunct steam engine painted and polished, oddly disconnected from its history, like an organ specimen in a laboratory jar, nowadays nothing more than an exhibit on a traffic roundabout,

Local historians trace the occupation of this hill as far back as six thousand years. There's record of a church community in Salobrenia in the early fourth century, and if there was an ancient building set on a promontory below the castillo, it was replaced by a mosque in the eleventh century, to serve the village around the castillo. It reverted to being a church after 1495, and after another century was rebuilt in typical Andalusian mudejar style. The sixteenth century building is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary.

Most of the lower reaches of a hill were in agricultural use until the mid twentieth century. Now the pueblo blanco covers its entirety with low rise apartments, houses and shops, with a road that winds up into the casco antico and many steep flights of steps giving that impression it's all much older than it really is.

Areas of the sea plain close to the beaches are also now occupied with holiday residences and recreational facilities, a tribute to the developments of the past quarter century. But, the view from above shows clearly this is still as much a horticultural region as it is a holiday destination.

As during my previous brief visit here, we returned home along the N340 coast road - slow but very pleasant with some remarkable views. The temperature was nearly 40 degrees C, and the car was quite uncomfortable until I discovered how to switch on the air conditioning correctly. To start with, we thought it was malfunctioning, but thankfully not so. Just not used to such luxury back at home.