The story of this place
Ronda sits astride the El Tajo gorge, its two halves stitched together by the Puente Nuevo, finished in 1793 after decades of work that reportedly cost the lives of fifty builders. A Moorish stronghold until 1485, the town became a byword for Andalusian romance—and horror. In 'For Whom the Bell Tolls,' Hemingway based a scene of villagers clubbing 'fascists' and hurling them off a cliff on real Civil War atrocities said to have happened at Ronda in 1936. The bullfighting Romero dynasty here helped invent the modern corrida on foot, and Orson Welles loved the town so much his ashes were buried nearby.