Grazalema is a magical little town. It’s big enough that you can wander the streets for a few days and still find new spots to explore each time. But it’s small enough to feel quiet and genuine when the bus trippers and car visitors leave for the day. There are three hotels, which range from budget to lavish, and about 10 bars or restaurants. Also four pastry shops, three little grocery stores, two banks (with ATMs), a post office, a pharmacy, four churches (one whose bells ring the quarter hours), and some nice little craft shops.
Our favorite shop belonged to a leather worker: a friendly, soft-spoken man who worked in one corner of his shop surrounded by his wares—beautiful purses and wallets and notebook covers and bags. He let us finger his softest hides and rubbed ambergris on our palms so we could smell its pretty, faintly citrus scent. (I’d run across ambergris in books but had no idea what it smelled like.) Spanish leather has been famous for centuries for its quality, so this seemed a good place for Melissa to buy a bag for carrying her art supplies.
The best thing about Grazalema, though, is its setting. This town of 2,000 people is nestled in a crook of mountains, which surround it on three sides. The fourth side has a beautiful view across a rolling green plain to other hills and mountains in the distance.
Nature—wild and domestic—is everywhere here. Dogs bark endlessly in the distance, roosters crow at all hours, swifts and martins soar among the houses, pigeons nestle in the eaves of churches, pine trees cover the mountains, and their scent fills the air and perfumes the chimney smoke.
We found Grazalema a perfect place to relax for a few days. If Melissa’s ankle had been up to hiking, we could easily have spent a week hiking in the mountains of the nature reserve that borders Grazalema. There’s even an outfitter in town that leads rock-climbing and caving and other outdoor adventures.
We contented ourselves with rambling around town, looking at churches and houses, a Roman fountain with eight carved faces, scenic overlooks, and a ruined hermitage on the hillside above town. We also climbed a steep old stone road (originally Roman and then rebuilt during Moorish times) that leads up from the valley into the town.
From Grazalema, two high plateaus are clearly visible in the distance. On the farther one sits the town of Ronda, and on the nearer, called Ronda la Vieja (Old Ronda), are the excavated ruins of a Roman city (including a theater) and some later settlements. From afar, both plateaus look like huge walled fortresses, but what appear to be walls are really naturally eroded cliffs of light sandstone. They’re very dramatic. We would have loved to visit the ruins, but no buses run there, and renting a taxi for a few hours is too expensive for our budget.
Still, it gives me an odd thrill to look out on a landscape that people have been seeing and marveling at for millennia, and to think of Romans sitting up there watching a play. Centuries ago, when villagers were less likely to travel, did goat herders in the hills around Grazalema, people working in the olive or flour mills, or women washing clothes or minding children gaze off at those plateaus and wonder what life was—or had been—like there? I know I would.
