| This region is more than just a group of mountain ranges.
It is a plateau in the city, a shelter for the towns in the Genal, a natural corridor in
the Guadiaro, and a gateway to the Málaga plain through the valleys of Túron and
Guadalteba. On the plateau and the northern valleys, Ronda is covered in pastureland and
holm-oak, it has open fields and a mountain chain. In the southern valley it is a forest
of chestnuts, cork trees, holm oaks, gall oaks and pine groves, which mixed with olive
trees in the hillocks and fruit trees on the river banks, embraces the towns in the Genal
and climbs the rocks in the Guadiaro. And in the centre it is the summit of fir trees and
centenary gall oaks, which look out from the Sierra de las Nieves onto the Guadalhorce and
the coast; a lookout which dominates the land of Málaga, the highland of Cádiz and even
the Seville countryside.
Among these lands, the highland is a world apart from the
legend that surrounds each town, each valley and each sierra. The highland is a landscape
which guards its richness with zeal, and it is the live history of the people from the
Genal and the Guadiaro, up to Montecorto and Cuevas del Becerro, who out of their
forestry, agriculture, livestock and commerce, make daily miracles of wealth. Cork in the
mounts of Cortes de la Frontera, chestnut in the Genal, cereal and acorn in the meadows
which are converted into Iberian pork in Arriate, Ronda, Montejaque and Benaoján;
aromatic plants which give fame to foreign perfumes and wood which are turned into art in
the furniture of the craftsmen, offered to the visitor in arcades, foundry and stone
barracks and even old palaces in the city of Ronda. |