Setenil de las Bodegas, Cádiz

Setenil de las Bodegas, Cádiz
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By m.p. - Jan 9, 2012 - 2:50 PM
The famous white villages of Andalucía are dotted all across the landscape, and there’s one in the far north east of Cádiz province, not far from the border with Málaga, which is particularly striking, to say the least.

Photo - http://lascargaeldiablo.blogspot.com/

The Cádiz writer and poet, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, describes it as, ‘One of the most astonishing villages in Andalucía, something like an architectural nightmare, a geological fright, where you come across habitable spaces excavated out of the rock itself, where, like troglodytes or birds, they live beneath immense granite ledges or what seems as an urban labyrinth.’

Setenil de las Bodegas, a village with some 3,000 inhabitants, looks down onto the Río Trejo below, and the lower part of the village has been built beneath the eaves of the gorge which has been created by the river, taking advantage of the natural cavities and overhangs which have been formed in the rock face.

In some places, it seems as if the houses are slowly being enveloped by the rock.

Although the origins of the village date back to the Roman invasion in the first Century AD, the first known stable settlement here was during the Moorish occupation. The village evolved from a fortified Moorish town and it’s known that the castle, whose ruins still stand today, dates back to at least the Almohad period in the 12th Century.

It was not until 1484 that Setenil was captured for the Catholic Kings during the Christian Reconquest, in the last of seven sieges which are said to have given the village its name, from the Latin phrase, ‘septem nihil’, - ‘seven times nothing’.

The conquest of this strategic location was of vital importance to the Christian forces as they advanced towards Granada. It took them 15 days to take the castle and legend has it that Queen Isabella of Castille went into early labour during the siege, and that her son, Sebastián, died a few hours after he was born. It is said that the 15th Century Ermita of San Sebastián, the first Christian construction in Setenil, was built in memory of her child.

The Catholic Kings made a gift to the village of the vestments which can be seen today in the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación, built between the end of the 15th and the start of the 16th Centuries, which were used in the first mass which was held in the church.

The second part of Setenil’s name, ‘Bodegas’, dates from the 15th Century when vineyards were introduced by the new Christian settlers. There are no bodegas in Setenil today however, as the vineyards were wiped out by the phylloxera wine blight which destroyed most of the vineyards in Europe.

Setenil celebrates the festival for its patron saint, San Sebastián, on January 20, and its annual feria in August. The Semana Santa festivities have been declared of National Tourist Interest in Andalucía, when two rival brotherhoods, the Santa Vera Cruz and Nuestro Padre Jesús, vie to put on the best procession in what has become known as the ‘guerra de los bandos’.

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