Michael Coy
By Michael Coy
LOCALS know it simply as “El Barrio”, and everyone loves to dine there in the open air on summer evenings, under the city walls. Now the news has emerged – the Barrio of San Francisco is getting a million-euro facelift.
Ronda’s mayor, María de la Paz Fernández, has announced that funds will be available in 2025 to remodel the Plaza Ruedo Alameda, the large square which dominates the Barrio.
Every year, towns all over Spain submit tenders to the Madrid government, bidding for a “Cultural Aid” grant. Ronda has won (for the third time!), and the result is, the square will be remodelled. The plan was drawn up by local architect Sergio Valadez: Madrid will contribute a million euros and the Ronda Town Hall will match the investment with a further million euros.
In fact, in recent years, Ronda has been very successful in competing for grants from the central government. Twice recently significant investment has come the city’s way: work on the Alameda (the park near the bullring) and on the Mondragón Palace has all been financed by Madrid, after some adroit bidding by the Ayuntamiento.
Lovers of the Barrio need not worry unduly: the project promises to remain ‘sympathetic’ to the area’s cultural, historical and artistic legacy. The Junta de Andalucía (a rough equivalent of a British county council) has already studied the plans and is satisfied that no harm will come from the impending facelift. Since the Barrio is listed as an “artistic site”, tests will need to be carried out between now and Easter before work can begin in earnest.
Much of the work will concentrate on pedestrian safety. At the moment the square has a ‘rim’, a step 8cm (3 inches) high which causes a lot of trips and stumbles. This will be removed. The square will be resurfaced with marble, and work will be undertaken to ‘train’ tree roots, so that they don’t break up the walking surface.
Other tasks include improving the Barrio’s sewage system and draining-off rainwater more efficiently. The centre of the vast square (currently rather gloomy at night) will be refitted with LED lighting.
RONDA’S BARRIO – A SIGNIFICANT HISTORIC SITE
When Ronda was a Muslim city (broadly from 700-1500AD), sharia law required burials to take place outside the city wall. The Barrio’s big square was Ronda’s cemetery.
The Christians set about capturing Ronda in the late 1400s, and the Barrio area is where the Christian army was camped during the siege. Perhaps the greatest bullfighter of all time, Pedro Romero (active roughly 1790-1810) lived here in the square. A convent still stands in the south-western corner of the plaza: when the Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936, the people of Ronda (traditionally anti-Church), set the convent on fire. The square’s old name (Almocábar) is in fact an Arabic word, referring to its use as a burial ground.
THE BARRIO’S TWO GATES
In Ronda, words like ‘old’ and ‘new’ have a special meaning. The ‘new’ bridge has been standing for 250 years, and the ‘old’ bridge has had more plastic surgery than Zsa-zsa Gabor’s face.
However, no-one disputes that the Barrio’s ‘old’ gate really is very old.
The gate dates from the 13th century and has the classic horseshoe design which was characteristic of medieval Arab architecture. The ‘new’ gate was added in the 1500s, to ease the flow of traffic (mules and pedestrians in those days) in and out of the city.
It dates from the reign of Charles I of Spain, son of Queen “Joan the Mad”, who united the thrones of Spain, Netherlands and Austria. Oddly, photos from the Victorian period show the tall gothic church of Santo Espiritu looking exactly as it does today, but these two venerable and ancient gates are clearly standing at right angles to each other – so how come they are now, today, facing in the same direction?
