I have seen and done some wild things in life, but none of the things I saw (including a Russian military vessel on the Baltic during a major storm) have made me feel as much as I did in a video game as The Puente Nuevo, in Ronda, a small town in Spain. In all honesty, you would need to be there in person to see how insane and picturesque this is. It looks like something out of Dark Souls. Just look at it! It’s gorgeous, and it’s haunting, and out-of-the-worldly, especially when seen from afar.
Ronda is a relatively small town in Southern Spain, filled to the brim with History. Numerous prehistoric settlements dot the surrounding landscape. The city saw Romans, Suebi, Visigoths, and Arabs pass by and leave their mark on the town and the surrounding landscape. It’s now wonder, it’s highly defensive location, on top of a massive gorge called Tajo (El Tajo de Ronda), where the Guadalevín river passes through, splits the city in two, and going from one side to the next will have you going down a very steep incline on one side, cross the only available bridge, and up, all the way around the other end. The city was so defensible that it took the Reconquista process until 1485 (7 years before the discovery of the Americas, and 249 years after the fall of Córdoba) for it to be seized by the Crown of Castile.
So, with a city developing on two sides of this massive gorge, an easier connection point was sorely needed for it to flourish economically, aside from the already existing bridge, which stayed at a much lower location in the gorge, making the detour massive if you needed to transport any kind of goods. A first attempt was made at building a bridge in 1735, but it was poorly built and soon collapsed in 1741. A new attempt was made in 1759, with construction finishing in 1793. The bridge stands an impressive 105 meters tall, has 3 spans or arches, and a length of 66 meters.
I personally took the two routes, from one end to the other, and crossing the bridge takes less than a minute, while going the longer route on foot will take you at least one to two hours, depending on how fit you are. If you’re carrying some cargo on your back, the trip will take you double that, at least. Doing that under the burning sun isn’t a pleasant experience.
This is what some of the trails look like:
Several stories exist about the bridge, the most somber of which are relatively recent, and it’s been said that the bridge was used as a jail during the Spanish Civil War, and that prisoners were killed via defenestration. This was alluded to in Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.
Before I wrap this one up, another interesting aspect of Ronda is the existence of several mills near the river, under the walls of the gorge, that were carved to take water from the river and power said windmills.
Those date back to the Middle Ages. They were so important that they had their own walls to protect them.
I hope you enjoyed this entry into my travel diary. Next time, we are going to be taking a look at the walls of Ronda, which are some of the most beautiful, well-preserved walls I have ever seen in person.
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