Michael Coy
WE’RE always reading about snow and precipitation on the north coast (Galicia and Cantabria), but at the moment it is sweeping Andalucia.
Which makes it slightly easier to believe that Andalucía’s Grazalema (Cadiz) gets the heaviest downpours in the whole peninsula – the rain in Spain is definitely not ‘mainly in the plain’!
This delightful hill village is situated about halfway between Ronda and Arcos de la Frontera, 20 miles from each.
READ MORE:
- WATCH: Torrential rain and flooding cause chaos on Spain’s Costa del Sol amid an orange weather warning for storms and hail
- DANA brings snow to Malaga as storm batters the Costa del Sol
When the sea is warm, clouds pick up a lot of evaporating water: the prevailing winds push them inland from the Atlantic, and when they touch cold rocks in the hills, they can’t hold the water any longer. (That’s why liquid, and in extreme temperatures, ice, forms on your car windscreen).
This ‘dumping’ of Atlantic water is known as the ‘rain shadow’ effect. It’s Grazalema’s bad luck to be the first high ground that the Atlantic clouds meet.
But it’s also a huge advantage. The village and its surrounding fields are extraordinarily fertile, and produce wonderful food. There are plenty of wild deer in the local forests – so many that they have to be culled, and there’s hardly a restaurant in Grazalema that doesn’t offer venison on its menu!
We recommend the October “Bandits Festival” in Grazalema as one of our region’s ‘must-see’ treats. Every open space is filled with temporary bars and shops, and the villagers dress as 18th-century smugglers. In the evening, as the various bonfires burn low, the people gather around the embers, and sing their traditional songs.
If you drink your wine or beer from a ceramic mug, you get to keep it as a souvenir! Roll on October, and mellow weather!
