Igualeja
Location
Serranía de Ronda
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Interesting Facts of Igualeja
Surface Area: 43.8 square kilometres
Population: 968
What the natives are called: Igualejeños
Outstanding Sights: Santa Rosa de Lima church and the headwaters of the River Genal.
Geographical Location: in the Genal valley (Ronda highlands). The village is 700 metres above sea level and 20 kilometres from Ronda and 142 kilometres from the city of Málaga. The average rainfall is 1,200 litres per square metre and the average temperature does not exceed 13.5º C.
The municipality of Igualeja, between the Sierra Blanca and Sierra Bermeja ranges and the Sierra de las Nieves Nature Park, offers the most characteristic features that geographically define the River Genal valley. The headwaters of this river are just outside the village, whose houses are not visible from any other locality and which actually hides from the visitor’s view until nearly the last bend in the road.
The visitor will realise before getting to the village that he or she are travelling through a tremendously rugged terrain. It is thickly covered by forests, broken only by the breaches, that had to be opened when building the road that skirts the Cascajares mountain range. This is the route that affords the very best views of the Genal valley, which is saying plenty considering that this is one of the areas that is most blessed by nature in the entire province of Málaga.
In these parts, level land is almost an abstract concept or impossible dream, since everything tends to slant just as much as the countless slopes that meet the channel of the Genal at sharp angles softened only by the leafy forest cover. In fact, in most of Igualeja the soil only allows the growth of olive or chestnut groves, and only to a lesser extent next to the village and on the riverbanks are there orchards and other types of vegetation that give a somewhat domesticated appearance to the landscape.
It is as though Igualeja’s history has been hidden away in the vegetation and is yet to blossom, as very few records exist with which to reconstruct its past. All that historians have been able to conclude is that the first settlements in this area occurred during the Muslim domination and that, after the conquest of the Highlands by the Catholic Monarchs, the modern municipality of Igualeja came under the jurisdiction of Ronda as a feudal holding of the Crown Prince Don Juan. With the death of the Crown Prince, the properties were inherited by his widow and later went back to the Crown until they obtained the status of an independent municipality.
Aside from these historical footnotes and having no significant events on which to form a judgment, it is reasonable to presume that the community had the same fortunes as its closest neighbours. There is a belief that Igualeja’s name comes from the fact that upon the expulsion of the Moors, the Christian colonisers divided the lands of its former occupants "por igual" ("equally")
Road Directions
If coming from the Costa del Sol take the AP-7 (N-340) expressway to San Pedro de Alcántara and there take the A-376 towards Ronda. About 12 kilometres short of that city turn onto the MA-526 road. Igualeja is 9 kilometres from this crossroads by that road.
Full graphical path: http://bit.ly/sgJdHY
Tourist Info
Ayuntamiento, Plaza De Andalucía, 26
Igualeja
Málaga
29440
Tel: +34 952 18 16 20
Fax: +34 952 18 16 53
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