Salobreña
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Salobreña (, < Phoenician ''Salambina Salawbiniya'') is a town on the ''
Costa Tropical Costa Granadina is a comarca in southern Spain, corresponding to the Mediterranean coastline of the province of Granada. It is also but less frequently called the Costa Tropical or Costa de Granada. It is crossed by the N-340 coastal highway th ...
'' in
Granada Granada (,, DIN 31635, DIN: ; grc, Ἐλιβύργη, Elibýrgē; la, Illiberis or . ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the fo ...
, Spain. It claims a history stretching back 6,000 years. There are two main parts of Salobreña; The first is The Old Town which sits atop a rocky prominence and is a cluster of whitewashed houses and steep narrow streets leading up to a tenth-century
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 ...
castle, called 'Castillo de Salobreña' and it is one of its main tourist attractions. The second part of Salobreña is new developments which spread from the bottom of the Old Town right to the beach. The whole town is almost surrounded by sugarcane fields on each side along the coast and further inland. Another tourist attraction in Salobreña is 'El Peñón' (The Rock), which divides two of Salobreña's five beaches and juts out between Playa La Guardia and Playa de la Charca/Solamar and into the sea.


History


Geological background

At the close of the
last glacial maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...
, the
Motril Motril () is a town and municipality on the Mediterranean coast in the Granada, Spain. It is the second largest town in the province, with a population of 60,368 as of 2016. The town is located near the Guadalfeo River and is from Granada. Hi ...
-Salobreña plain on which Salobreña now stands was not yet land: rather it was a large bay studded with a number of
dolomite Dolomite may refer to: *Dolomite (mineral), a carbonate mineral *Dolomite (rock), also known as dolostone, a sedimentary carbonate rock *Dolomite, Alabama, United States, an unincorporated community *Dolomite, California, United States, an unincor ...
crags which were islands, most prominently the formation now known as Monte Hacho (73m) and the headland on which Salobreña now stands (110m). The
Guadalfeo The Guadalfeo is a small river in the province of Granada, Spain between the Sierra Nevada mountain range and the coastal ranges of Sierra de la Contraviesa and Lújar. This river is formed by the merging of three rivers, the Rio Poqueira, Río ...
river drained into the bay, running down the
Tajo de los Vados The Tagus ( ; es, Tajo ; pt, Tejo ; see below) is the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. The river rises in the Montes Universales near Teruel, in mid-eastern Spain, flows , generally west with two main south-westward sections, to e ...
gorge which separates the Sierra de Escalate to the north-east of Salobreña from the Sierra de Chaparral to the west. The river gradually filled the bay with silt comprising post-
orogenic Orogeny is a mountain building process. An orogeny is an event that takes place at a convergent boundary, convergent plate margin when plate motion compresses the margin. An ''orogenic belt'' or ''orogen'' develops as the compressed plate crumpl ...
, miocenic, and
quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...
material, producing a fertile
alluvial plain An alluvial plain is a largely flat landform created by the deposition of sediment over a long period of time by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A floodplain is part of the process, being the sma ...
, on which agriculture could begin by the Bronze Age. At this time, the outcrop on which the old town of Salobreña now stands had become a peninsula. Meanwhile, the rocky outcrop of the Peñon, which now juts from La Guardia beach into the sea, remained an island into the seventeenth century. A map of 1722 is the first evidence that the beach had reached it, making it a peninsula.


Ancient

Archaeological finds show human habitation around Salobreña at the rocky promontory known as the Peñon beginning in the
Neolithic period The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
, when the Peñon was still an island, with strata perhaps beginning as early as the
palaeolithic period The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
and continuing into the
Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
at the Cueva del Capitán (Captain's Cave) in the nearby hamlet of Lobres. Evidence of Bronze Age settlement from around 1500 BCE has also been found on the Salobreña headland and, slightly further inland again, Monte Hacho. Such settlements would have been characteristic of the settlement of easily defensible rocky headlands in the region at the time. Salobreña is thought to have experienced contact with the
Phoenicians Phoenicia () was an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient thalassocracy, thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-st ...
around the eighth century BCE and then Greek and Punic culture around the sixth. At this time, its name is attested as ''Selambina''. A major impact of Roman culture is, however, visible for the second century BCE, attested in widespread archaeological finds.


Medieval

In 713 CE, the region of Elvira (roughly corresponding to the
Province of Granada Granada is a province of southern Spain, in the eastern part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is bordered by the provinces of Albacete, Murcia, Almería, Jaén, Córdoba, Málaga, and the Mediterranean Sea (along the Costa Tropical). ...
today) came under the Arab rule of Mūsa bin Nusayr, and by the tenth century, a castle (''ḥiṣn'') at Salobreña is recorded in Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Musa al-Razi's ''
Crónica del moro Rasis Crónica may refer to: * ''Crónica'' (newspaper), a Buenos Aires newspaper * Crónica Electrónica or Crónica, an independent media label based in Porto, Portugal * Crónica TV, an Argentine news cable channel *Crônica, a Portuguese-language for ...
''. Al-Razi also noted the introduction of the cultivation of
sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks t ...
at Salobreña. The main crop of medieval Salobreña was sugar-cane, though other attested crops include cumin and bananas. By the eleventh century,
Ibn Hayyan Abū Marwān Ḥayyān ibn Khalaf ibn Ḥusayn ibn Ḥayyān al-Qurṭubī () (987–1075), usually known as Ibn Hayyan, was a Muslim historian from Al-Andalus. Born at Córdoba, his father was an important official at the court of the Andalusi ...
could refer to Salobreña as a ''medina'' ('town'), a denomination that became usual by the fourteenth century, when Salobreña was the seat of government for surrounding hamlets like
Vélez de Benaudalla Vélez de Benaudalla is a municipality in the province of Granada, Spain. According to the 2008 census (INE), the city has a population of 2,980 inhabitants. The municipality includes the hamlet of La Gorgoracha, about south of the municipal ce ...
, Molvizar, and Lobres. In 1489, Granada came under Castilian rule, and
Francisco Ramirez de Madrid Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''. Nicknames In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed "Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father of ...
became governor of Salobreña's fortress and town. The next year, the inhabitants of the town supported the resistance of
Muhammad XII of Granada Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII ( ar, أبو عبد الله محمد الثاني عشر, Abū ʿAbdi-llāh Muḥammad ath-thānī ʿashar) (c. 1460–1533), known in Europe as Boabdil (a Spanish rendering of the name ''Abu Abdallah''), was the ...
to Castilian rule, which speeded the increase of Castilian migration into the settlement. In 1568-69, the
Moriscos Moriscos (, ; pt, mouriscos ; Spanish for "Moorish") were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Roman Catholic church and the Spanish Crown commanded to convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed the open ...
of Salobreña participated in revolts.


Modern

Sugar-cane remained key to the town's economy through the sixteenth century, returning to prominence in the nineteenth. In between, cotton became the dominant crop. The early-modern history of Salobreña is not well understood. In the nineteenth century, however, Salobreña was strategically important in the
Spanish War of Independence The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, ...
, and also adopted new steam-technologies for sugar production pioneered in
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
. The expansion of the town in the second half of the nineteenth century that was driven by a boom in sugar-cane production led to the demolition of the last remains of its medieval walls. By the 1970s, settlement was expanding from the outcrop on which the old town sits onto the alluvial plain below. Today, the economy of the coastal plain around Salobreña is based on tourism and sugarcane agriculture, while the mountains are characterised by terraced agriculture with almond and, increasingly, sub-tropical fruit trees (with
custard apples Custard apple is a common name for a fruit and for the tree that bears it, ''Annona reticulata.'' The tree’s fruits vary in shape; they may be heart-shaped, spherical, oblong or irregular. Their size ranges from 7 to 12 cm (2.8 to 4.7 i ...
and avocado pears being the first to be introduced). The last remaining cane sugar factory in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
was located along the coast just west of the village of La Caleta de Salobreña. It closed in 2006.


Climate

Salobreña's climate is a Mediterranean, semi-arid climate, with annual rainfall of 500mm per year, and whose microclimate is sub-tropical. In the hotter months, average temperatures are around 26 °C, peaking in August around the mid 30 °C's during the day and mid 20 °C's at night and around 13 °C in the colder months. The annual average temperature is 19 °C.''Salobreña: Rutas y senderos / Countryside Paths and Walks'', ed. by Juan Manuel Pérez, trans. by Deborah Green (Salobreña: Ayuntamiento de Salobreña, 2009), , p. 17.


References


External links


Everything you need to know about Salobreña, Spain - with beautiful photos!
{{DEFAULTSORT:Salobrena Municipalities in the Province of Granada Seaside resorts in Spain