Peña de los Enamorados ("The Lovers' Rock") is a

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited Summit (topography), summit area, and ...

near the city of

Antequera Antequera () is a city and municipality in the Comarca de Antequera, province of Málaga, part of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia. It is known as "the heart of Andalusia" (''el corazón de Andalucía'') because of its central locat ...

Málaga Province Málaga (, ) is a municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 578,460 in 2020, it is the second-most populous city in Andalusia after Seville and the sixth most popu ...

Andalusia Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. It reaches a height of 880 metres above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...

Name

The mountain was named after a legend from the local

oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...

. The most well-known version of the legend says that two young

Moorish The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or se ...

lovers from rival clans, a young man from Antequera and girl from nearby

Archidona Archidona is a town and municipality in the province of Málaga, part of the autonomous community of Andalusia in southern Spain. It is the center of the comarca of Nororiental de Málaga and the head of the judicial district that bears its name ...

, threw themselves from the rock while being pursued by the girl's father and his men. This romantic legend was later adapted by

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

. In his '' Laila and Manuel'' the lovers were a Muslim girl and her father's Christian slave. Christopher Columbus knew of this name. His chronicler, Bartolome de Casas, copied a log entry from Oct 29, 1492 in which Columbus describes what he saw 8 days earlier in Cuba, "Remarking on the position of the river and port, to which he gave the name San Salvador, he described its mountains as lofty and beautiful, like the peña de las enamoradas ... ". (Note that there is a mistaken choice of gender in the name by someone, be it Columbus himself, the chronicler or the translator.) The mountain is also popularly known as "Montaña del Indio" because it looks like the head of an American Indian when seen from certain angles.

Abrigo de Matacabras

The Abrigo (shelter) of Matacabras, located at the foot of the northwest face of the Peña de los Enamorados, is closely linked with the

Dolmen of Menga __NOTOC__ The Dolmen of Menga ( es, Dolmen de Menga) is a megalithic burial mound called a tumulus, a long barrow form of dolmen, dating from 3750-3650 BCE approximately. It is near Antequera, Málaga, Spain. It is one of the largest known a ...

whose central axis points directly to it. The tomb is orientated to the northeast, north of the sunrise on the summer solstice, and is the only known tomb so oriented in Europe in this cultural context. The ATLAS research group from the

University of Seville The University of Seville (''Universidad de Sevilla'') is a university in Seville, Spain. Founded under the name of ''Colegio Santa María de Jesús'' in 1505, it has a present student body of over 69.200, and is one of the top-ranked universi ...

recently published a study of the high resolution analysis of Abrigo de Matacabras's schematic style cave paintings. The small cave has both visual and symbolic links to the Menga dolmen, establishing landscape relationships that are possibly unique in European prehistory. The results confirmed the Neolithic chronology of the cave “probably, at least, at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC... and its importance as a place of reference for the Neolithic (and possibly even older) population of the region...” Crucial new data on the origin of the Dolmens of Antequera, a World Heritage Site https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180628120046.htm

References

External links

Antequera, Crossroads of Andalusia
Mountains of Andalusia Penibaetic System Antequera {{Andalusia-geo-stub