Frontier towns from Olvera to Tarifa

• De la Frontera — “of the frontier”. Jimena and Castellar kept the phrase. It marks a town that once sat on the edge of the Nasrid state.
• Guzman el Bueno — Alonso Perez de Guzman. In 1294 he held Tarifa against a siege and refused to surrender even when his son was threatened. The castle carries his name.
• The Strait — the water between Tarifa and Morocco. In the Middle Ages Castile, Granada and the Marinids of North Africa all tried to control it.

Start here. Ronda sits on a limestone shelf split by the Tajo gorge and the Guadalevin. The Puente Nuevo is the view everyone knows. The town was a Nasrid stronghold and fell to the Catholic Monarchs in 1485. Enough of the old walls remain to show why it mattered.

The Arab baths, below the old town, are among the best preserved in Spain. The Mondragon Palace holds the town museum. Santa Maria la Mayor stands on the site of the mosque. The bullring is eighteenth-century and famous; it is not a frontier castle, but it is on every first visit. Give Ronda a night if you can. The rest of this road is easier from here than from the Costa in a single loop.

• Ronda — map
• El Tajo gorge — map
• Puente Nuevo — map
• Arab baths — map
• Mondragon Palace — map
• Santa Maria la Mayor — map
• Bullring — map

Olvera is the white town on a cone of rock: castle at the top, church beside it, houses packed on the slope. The fortress began as a Muslim keep and was rebuilt after the Christian conquest. Climb it for the view over the olive country, not for furnished rooms. A few kilometres away, near Alcala del Valle, stand the ruins of a sixteenth-century Franciscan convent. They are a short extra if you are already on that road, not a reason to skip Ronda.

• Olvera — map
• Olvera Castle — map
• Alcala del Valle — map
• Franciscan convent, Alcala del Valle — map

From Ronda the old road south follows the line that once faced Granada and the Strait. Gaucin sits high enough to see the sea on a clear day. Castillo del Aguila — Eagle Castle — crowns the ridge. The fabric is mixed: older cores, later repairs. You come for the view and the ruin, then drop through the white streets. The village has painters and a slow lunch trade. It is not a museum town.

Jimena de la Frontera stands inside Los Alcornocales, the cork-oak park. The castle on the hill is the reason for the name. Parts go back to the early Islamic period; Roman cisterns survive in the precinct, and the site is often linked with ancient Oba. Walk the keep and the water tanks. Laja Alta, a painted rock shelter in the district, is a separate excursion if you like prehistoric boats on stone. The Romano-Byzantine wall fragment is for those already on the castle hill.

Castellar de la Frontera is two places. The old village still lives inside the castle walls on the hill, looking over the Guadarranque reservoir and the cork woods. The new town lies below. The fortress is thirteenth-century in its main form. Nearby, La Almoraima holds the remains of a sixteenth-century Mercedarian convent in woodland. Stay up in the old enclosure if you want the frontier setting; the new town is where most services are.

• Gaucin — map
• Castillo del Aguila — map
• Jimena de la Frontera — map
• Castle of Jimena — map
• Laja Alta — map
• Romano-Byzantine wall, Jimena — map
• Castellar de la Frontera — map
• Castle of Castellar — map
• La Almoraima — map

Tarifa looks at Morocco. The castle on the sea was begun in the tenth century under Abd al-Rahman III. In 1294 Alonso Perez de Guzman held it for Castile. The Marinid army had his son. Guzman refused to open the gate; the boy was killed. The town named the castle Guzman el Bueno after that defence. You visit the fortress, the Jerez gate in the old walls, and the point where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. Los Lances beach and Isla de las Palomas are the water’s edge. Wind and kitesurfing are why many people stay; the castle is why this page includes the town.

• Tarifa — map
• Castle of Guzman el Bueno — map
• Puerta de Jerez — map
• Playa de Los Lances — map
• Isla de las Palomas — map