Ronda – the "ciudad soñada" of travelling Romantics and bullfighting afficionados

The split city

Ronda, a stunning town on a split plateau in Andalusia’s Serranía de Ronda, has inspired many ecstatic descriptions. For the Damascus writer Ismail Abu’l-Feda (1273-1331), famous for e.g. documenting Muslim campaigns against Christian crusaders, Ronda was “an elegant, aspiring city for which the clouds serve as a turban and the towers as a scabbard” (not an exact translation), while Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a German-language poet from Prague, wrote: “an elegant, aspiring city for which the clouds serve as a turban and the towers as a scabbard” (not an exact translation), while Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a German-language poet from Prague, wrote: “I have searched everywhere for the ‘city of dreams’ and found it here in Ronda.”  Not surprisingly, the city’s tourist industry often advertises Ronda as a ciudad soñada”, a dreamed-of city or a city of dreams. The American author and war correspondent Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) declared the city ideal not only for visits to its bullring but also for lovers fleeing the ugly constraints of society . This last point also fits Ronda’s monument to the wealthy travellers of the 19th century (here dubbed travellers of the Romantic era). Since 2013, quotes by some of these visitors (including Washington Irving, Countess Robersart and Alfred von Wolzogen) adorn a ceramic wall image of the city. The location is well chosen. No matter who visits Ronda and why, at some point, every visitor crosses the nearby Puente Nuevo over the Tajo ravine, the work of the river Guadalevín, which divides the city. From here, the eye wanders off into the romantic landscape below and afar, scanning meadows, mountains and sky, to at some point return to the houses nestling on either side of the bridge, or down into the dizzying depths of the gorge. “Tajo” means both abyss and gash, and one might consider the gap between the two parts of the city to be the work of some mighty and ancient sword. Hm. Probably not. . .

The Tajo, Seen from the Puente Viejo

Ronda is beautiful, Ronda is fascinating, Ronda’s heart is the unequal pair of Tajo and Puente Nuevo. But though the city has but one gorge, it has three bridges. Bridges symbolise connections; where such structures exist, people come together. This pacifist idea even inspired part of the design of the euro banknote series: “The bridges on the backsides symbolise the understanding between the people of Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world”But is it also true that, where bridges are demolished, shots are fired? The oldest of Ronda’s three bridges, known as the Arab Bridge, probably dates back to Roman times (Ronda was home to various dominant cultures throughout its history). From the Puente Arabe, the old town (La Ciudad) stretches up the cliffs, while the river flows into the gorge. It must be noted that the new part of town (El Mercadillo) is much younger. In the old days, there was only the walled and single entity of La Ciudad, secure on its higher ground and with no gash through its heart. Ronda’s first bridge was used to cross the river Guadalevín without getting wet, to facilitate the crossing of carts. To access the fertile land or to enjoy the safety of the city, to indulge in its luxuries. It is a practical thing, near the ground and ignoring the nearby Tajo. The second bridge, Puente Viejo, is in the immediate vicinity, and it is just a tad higher, rising about 30 metres above the river. Its purpose resembled that of the older bridge, but it is wider, offers a beautiful view into the gorge, and provides easier access to the ascent to the historic centre. From here, the remains of the ancient walls of old Ronda can be seen. They are a reminder of the often uneasy, war-torn past of the region. For centuries, Ronda was a border town between the Emirate of Granada and the emerging Christian Spain of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. The relationship between the two neighbouring territories had been (more or less) peaceful for a long while. It is even possible to view the rulers of Castile as the temporary feudal lords of the Nasrid dynasty of Granada, a relationship that would somewhat guarantee peace and a degree of religious tolerance on both sides of the border, but this relatively positive mode of co-existence crumbled in 1482. Attacks along the border, effected by both sides, ended in a declaration by the catholic rulers of Castile. They would conquer the Emirate of Granada and make the region all Christian. Bridges were to be demolished or at least damaged, including the one to Ronda. Some even consider the fall of Ronda as securing the end of the last Muslim polity on the Iberian Peninsula, making the fall of Granada in 1492 into the full stop of a sentence whose first word had been written in Ronda seven years earlier; Christian forces captured the city in 1485.

Puente Nuevo

Bridging the abbiss

Following the city’s incorporation into the Christian fold, the Mercadillo district grew up on the other side of the ravine, probably starting near the old bridge and at the time just neighbouring the city without being an official part of it. Why even bother living outside the city walls, one might ask. A probable reason was the high taxes for traders within the walls, making settling or doing business outside the city a profitable alternative. In 1542, the idea of a bridge over the abyss to provide a more direct connection between La Ciudad and the upper part of the Mercadillo growing up the hill was first expressed. This connection, in the euro banknotes’ spirit, took until 1734 to become a reality. That year, a single-arch bridge stretching the emptiness saw inauguration. It crumbled in 1741, taking up to 50 people with it into the ravine. Bridges can be treacherous. In 1793, after a construction period of 34 years, the current bridge, with three arches and built on solid foundations, rose out of the ravine. 98 metres high and 66 metres long, the most photographed bridge in Spain is a peculiar masterpiece whose dialectics of unobstructed views and abysmal depths elicit thoughts of freedom and death. For a long time, people upheld that Martín de Aldehuela, the architect of the bridge, had thrown himself to his death from here (some say because he could never build something so perfect again, others blame malicious rumours of government schemes to demolish his bridge and replace it with an improved structure). Today, most sources agree Aldehuela died in 1802 in his house in Málaga. Still, the bridge remained and remains somewhere in the realm between beauty and death. For a long time, a room in the structure (now a museum dedicated to the Puente Nuevo) served as a prison. Some say political prisoners were thrown to their deaths from there during the Spanish Civil War. There is no evidence of this, but a somewhat similar scene in Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls  is often said to be sei in Ronda.

Let’s reconsider the architect of the bridge. Another of his designs was to become important for Ronda (and Hemingway): the Plaza de Toros de Ronda, the local bullring, located close to the Puente Nuevo on the Mercadillo side and completed a few years before it (1785). This venue is an important place in the history of the art of bullfighting. Today, the tradition is subject to growing criticism – and rightly so. How could the public slaying of an animal have any cultural value? Hemingway: „The only place where you could see life and death, i.e., violent death now that the wars were over, was in the bull ring and I wanted very much to go to Spain where I could study it. I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.“¹

View out to the Mountains

Hemingways For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway first visited Ronda in the 1920s (the quote above also dates from this time; the First World War was over, the future seemed to belong to peace). In Death in the Afternoon (1932), his essay on bullfighting, he wrote „The entire town and as far as you can see in any direction is romantic background.“² In Ronda, Hemingway also assisted the appearances of a local matador, who inspired a character in his breakthrough novel Fiesta – The Sun also Rises Set in Paris and Pamplona, the story addresses the psychological wounds of the young survivors of the First World War, the ‘Lost Generation’, so dubbed by writer Gertrude Stein. In 2015, the city of Ronda erected a stele in memory of Hemingway (and, nearby, also one for Orson Welles). Hemingway’s stele bears the names of the bullfighters El Niño de la Palma and Antonio Ordóñez (father and son) as the writer’s “primer y ultimo canto novelesco” (roughly: first and last novelistic song), and refers to two of Hemingway’s works inspired by the two bullfighters (Fiesta and the posthumous The Dangerous Summer). There is no mention of For Whom the Bell Tolls.

And why would there be? None of the novel’s scenes are explicitly set in Ronda. However, many assume the most famous scene, cruel and surprising, to take place in the split city (as confirmed by Hemingway in an interview). Of course, we now have the Puente Nuevo in mind. Hemingway describes the place: „The town is built on the high bank above the river and there is a square there with a fountain and there are benches and there are big trees that give a shade for the benches (…) On three sides of the plaza is the arcade and on the fourth  side is the walk shaded by the trees beside the edge of the cliff with, far below, the river. It is three hundred feet down to the river (…) Pablo organized it all as he did the attack on the barracks. First he had the entrances to the streets blocked off with carts as though to organize the plaza for a capea. For an amateur bull fight. The fascists were all held in the Ayuntamiento, the city hall, which was the largest building on one side of the plaza.“³

Before I read the novel (en route to Ronda), I had assumed that the novel, set during the Spanish Civil War, would depict the cruelty of the Nationalists in line with the general historical picture. Chapter 10 of the book describes how people labelled as fascists are beaten to death by the townspeople in a politically motivated ritual getting out of hand and then thrown into the abyss. The scene is reminiscent of a rod run and was (in the novel) the mind-child of republican rebel leader Pablo, characterised as intelligent and cruel during the capture of the city, but as cowardly and broken later on in his timeline. Pablo wants the entire village (or ‘the people’ - the terms for ‘people’ and ‘village’ are identical in Spanish) to take part in the ‘cleansing’ of the fascists. Through the murders, the population is to take responsibility and become politicised. This ‘intelligent’ action turns out to be a pact with the devil. Even for cruel Pablo, who later seems to break under the cruelty of the necessities of war.

To be clear: Hemingway in no way relativizes the guilt or inhumanity of the fascist regime, nor is this in any way the intention of this text. Hemingway’s text later describes the despicable acts of some people on the fascist side of the polarisation. He instead challenges the pretence of innocence by those on any ideological side who take pleasure in passing judgement on the lives of others, or even killing them, or rationalising such behaviour as politically motivated, necessary actions. „We tresh fascists today, and out of the chaff comes the freedom of this pueblo“⁴, says one man taking part in the bludgeoning of the village fascists. The scene, narrated by Pilar, Pablo’s wife, escalates into a bloody slaughter. Blame and politicisation awaken a monster whose deeds Pilar soon wants no part of. But we should now turn to the actual narrator. Although most people consider Hemingway a macho writer, as someone who gets his kicks out of hunting, bullfighting and physical conflict, the novel comes across as a call to pacifism. Hm. Is this more than a personal interpretation of mine?

Inscription on a monument for a bullfighter, roughly: "Cowards are not men, and bullfighting requires men"

For Whom the Bell Tolls  seems (my interpretation) to portray war as a mathematics of violence. Crowds count, material numbers count, the exact timing of a mission counts; individuals have to function, are interchangeable and can – a troubling thought – recover their humanity lost by being war-cogs most easily in excesses and in brutality. War promotes the ugliest aspects in people, on all sides – but perhaps not equally so on all sides? Hemingway also discusses good, human attitudes. In one of the first chapters, Robert Jordan, the main character of the novel, explains in a conversation with his guide Anselmo, who hates having to kill people and notes that some of his comrades take pleasure in murder: „Nobody does except those who are dirsturbed in the head. But I feel nothing against it if it is necessary. When it is for the cause.“⁵

Is Hemingway asking at what point it becomes justified to take up arms, to kill people? Perhaps. The very first scene clarifies that Robert Jordan is to be sacrificed for strategic reasons, according to the mathematics of war. It is strange how little the character resists his fate - he doesn’t seem to care much for being alive. The cause is more important. The republic. Anti-fascism. The future. In one of his books (See reading List below), French Historien Pierre Vilar remembers an “anarchist baker, a kind of ascetic who believed he had the right to eliminate the unteachable class enemy, but considered him a rare case; his own life mattered little to him - only the bright future counted”. But even this almost religious devotion to the ‘cause’ seems to be alien to Robert Jordan (my impression). Is he simply a man following a call? Or is his devotion to the cause perhaps even a kind of suicide?

Maria, one of the two main female characters, is a young Spanish woman. The fascists forced her and her fellow villagers to watch as they shot their parents for their cause (in horrifying parallel to the events in the village that might have been Ronda), after which she and the other women of her village suffered a ritual including the shaving of their hair and a subsequent rape (their honour/status as women/humans is taken from them in a bestial and twisted ideological act, as becomes clear in the novel’s context). Later, the guerrilla group Pablo/Pilar frees a traumatised Maria during a railway robbery. Robert Jordan meets Maria in the group’s hideout. It is tenderness at first sight, and in the following three days Maria and Robert experience a love that seems based on the need for humanity, or rather an escape from the needs of war, from inhumanity. They don’t know each other, but they are, for each other, the promise of a better life. The promise of survival. Of joyous life threatened by a world steeped in death. Now, Robert Jordan would have a reason to live. Still, he does not deviate an inch from his mission. He remains the manly, determined cog in the machine the generals had envisioned him to be. Does the ‘cause’ triumph over life?

Art near the bullfighting ring

The many rites of death

One theme of the book is, for me, the confrontation with one’s own extinction. Hemingway uses the bullfight as a motif to explore this more general dance with death. The aforementioned Pilar was in relationships with several matadors before Pablo (the political-revolutionary ‘matador’) and describes one of them, Finito, in more detail. The portrayal of bullfighting itself is also interesting, as Hemingway does not hide its elements of cruel entertainment and points to the mathematics of violence hidden under the ritual’s skin. Unlike in a war between humans, the chances for the ‘hero’ are excellent in this case. Yet, Finito has no alternative but to dance, to fight, to kill. He has to perform the slaughter. He is part of the scene, of the drama. He faces or ignores his fear under the watchful eyes of the spectators, to kill the animal at hand. In a peculiar scene, Pilar (in the story’s past) watches the end of a bullfight. Finito moves away from the bull. Pilar „knew he could not run across the ring if his life dependent on it“⁶”. Instead, he does the slow triumphal lap around the ring expected of victorious matadors – sad-eyed and smiling. Why couldn’t he run? Would he have been too exhausted or did he have to fulfil the expectations of the audience? In the following text, Pilar explains why Finito became a bullfighter. What, she asks, were a poor man’s options for making money in Spain at the time? She details three possibilities: Become a thief, become a bullfighter, become an opera singer. Finito, it seems, was an honest man with an average voice at best.

After a feast in his honour, Finito will die of the internal wounds caused by the many bulls he had slaughtered during his career. Perhaps he also dies because he cannot resist the (professional-social) obligation to take part in the aftermath of the show-dance with death that is his job. It is easy to build a bridge between the depictions of bullfights and the larger narrative of the novel, although this connection should not be overemphasised.

Let us return to the massacre of the fascist men. The scene somewhat resembles the setup of a bullfight. The victims stand no chance at all. Nor are they accorded any final dignity, something that Hemingway and his character Pilar seem to reject. Instead, they are ridiculed, degraded, disposed of. Rumours that the author witnessed a similar event in Ronda are almost surely false, though. By the time Hemingway had reached Spain as a war correspondent, the fascists had already conquered Ronda. However, as Ramon Buckley writes in an illuminating article (linked below), Hemingway must have heard similar reports. Also interesting is a text by Hemingway that Buckley refers to, describing what was done with the killed bulls and horses after a bullfight in Ronda. After removing the edible parts, the people assigned this work threw whatever remains there were over the cliffs, to the delight of the circling buzzards. The author would have witnessed this scene in Ronda (before the Civil War).

Stele commemorating Hemingway on the Paseo de Blas Infante

After reading the novel, Hemingway appears to be far more multi-faceted than his stereotype suggests. The title of For Whom the Bell Tolls refers to a quotation (preceding the novel) by the English metaphysical poet John Donne (1572-1631), known as the ‘No man is an island’ quotation (from Meditation XVII, Devotion). In the wider context, the relevant text reads „Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee“⁷. Donne respects the lives of others here in a radical and astonishingly plausible way, even to the point of rejecting death. It is difficult to imagine a clearer rejection of the mathematics of violence we call war.

But Hemingway does not make it that easy for himself or his readers. He understands the need to defend oneself, perhaps even to fight for an ideal. And he describes his main character as apolitical. The background figures are more political, those who send Robert Jordan to his (almost) certain death. Is Hemingway criticising the alleged inevitability of war? In an essay (linked below), Anders Greenspan quotes the author: „I would like to write anti-war correspondence that would help keep us out of it when it comes“⁸Hemingway called the Spanish Civil War a “little world war” and wrote home that he must now feel as if he had “no wife, no children, no boat, nothing” because he could not function otherwise amidst the surrounding atrocities. After his return to the USA, Hemingway believed in the Republic's victory, collected money for humanist relief supplies, criticised his government’s neutral stance and drew criticism for his outspoken anti-fascism. He began work on the novel here discussed shortly before the victory of Franco’s fascists.

It is therefore no wonder that Robert Jordan (probably) did not survive the novel. While the love story between Maria and Robert is at times unconvincing, and the character of Maria remains rather pale (especially in contrast to the energetic, multi-faceted Pilar), the last scene closes a strange circle. The bridge is blown, the mission fulfilled. Robert, wounded on the run, sees it as his duty to stay behind in order to slow down the advancing fascists through his sacrifice. He obeys the necessities of war, the lack of alternatives, and wants to face his death alone. To ensure that Maria leaves (survives), he says: „You are me now. Truly thus I go too.“ You are me, we are one. Where you go, there I will be, where you live, there I live. I am absorbed in you. It is the swan song of the individual, a (reversed) use of John Donne’s meditation. No man is an island, but in the common cause we all live on (freed from death) and so the bells never toll. But is the loss of any human being (murderer, fascist, freedom fighter, child or old white man) a loss? Or only that of those of whom we are a part, with whom we feel “involved”? Is it all just about preserving humanity? Robert Jordan still says: „In war there are many things like this“”. I guess he refers to the death sentence declared by a situation. He is almost cold, seems to have no further aspirations or hopes beyond belonging to the cause; his imminent death appears to be a foregone conclusion. But he also says to himself: „Try to believe what you told her“. The desire to live is still there, and it is deeper than any cultural conditioning.

In a 1940 review of the novel, Clifton Fadiman wrote for the New Yorker: Hemingway „knows that the war, at its deepest level (the first battle of the war now on your front pages), is a war between those who deny life and those who affirm it. And if it is not yet such a war, it must become so, or it will, no matter who wins, have been fought in vain“⁹. Fadiman is referring to the Second World War. The aforementioned anarchist baker, convinced that it is OK to kill the wrong people for the right cause, has a certain, sad resonance here. The last scene of the novel, as well as the quote that provides its title, suggests a somewhat different interpretation. Anyone who affirms life should reject all war (at the very least to the extent that even necessary or imposed wars should be ended as quickly as possible and at almost any cost). Anyone corrupted by the assumption that killing even the worst human beings is laudable, that death sentences may be justified, has already lost the war (however necessary it may be).

Hemingway is no cuddly character, no hero to most. Among people in Ronda and elsewhere, the question about the writer’s reputation was more than once met with the swift reply “Well, he’s just an old white man ...”. His reputation seems to be one of someone mostly interested in bullfighting, war and sex. Nevertheless, the reaction is strange.¹⁰ It has also been said that Hemingway invented the Spain presented in his books. In Ronda, not too far from the stele honouring the writer, there is a statue for a writer who hardly anyone would call an ‘old white man’. The German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke also visited Ronda.

Advertisement for Ronda in the old railway station

Rilke and the Andalusian idyll

Rilke spent the winter of 1912/13 in Spain. He had begun the Duino Elegies , regarded as his masterpiece, during a long visit to aristocratic acquaintances at Dino Castle in Italy, but had come down with an acute case of writer’s block. The leitmotif of these elegies is the idea of the angel, and Rilke hoped to find inspiration in Toledo, where he wanted to expose himself to El Greco’s works (of which he had received his first inkling in the studio of the French artist Rodin). His first reaction to Spain was an, ahem, poetic-touristic enthusiasm (he writes of Toledo that it is “a city of heaven and earth ... passing through all of existence ...” ). Driven away by the cold winter of Toledo, he travelled further south, deepened his fascination with Islam in Córdoba (he wrote in a letter in 1925 “the ‘angels’ of the elegies have nothing to do with the angels of the Christian heaven - rather with the angelic figures of Islam”) and found no access to Seville. It was only in Ronda, in the glamorous, English-run Hotel Reina Victoria that his creativity returned. The hotel is close to the Puente Nuevo. The dramatic panorama of the depths impressed the poet, who wrote in a letter “The river in its gorge-like abyss also reflects (...) my innermost being”. Naturally, Rilke also considered the landscape around Ronda, describing it in letters: “it is indescribable, around the whole a spacious valley, busy with its fields, oaks and olive trees, and over there the pure mountains rise up again, as if rested, mountain after mountain, and form the noblest distance”.

The most famous poem Rilke wrote in Ronda is probably the Spanish Trilogy (easy to find online; here is a short extract: “... to make one thing; of the strangers, of which/not one I do know, Lord, and me and me/just one thing ...”). The theme is both the landscape around Ronda and a longed-for unity between the outer and inner world, between the locals and their surroundings and the poet; or perhaps a subordination relative to creation here requested from some ‘Lord’. Or even the dissolution of the human curse, which, in Rilke’s case, seems to be consciousness (for Rilke, self-reflection leads to suffering; in a 1915 letter he wrote: “If we are always inadequate in loving, uncertain in deciding and incapable of death, how is it possible to exist?” ). Despite or because of the deep gulf between Rilke and Hemingway, it is possible (but not necessary, let’s try anyway) to find some connection to Hemingway. Where Rilke, surrounded by God and his terrible angels (terrible because they are so utterly superior to human beings, thus revealing the insufficiency of the mere human), longs for revelation and becoming one with a kind of truth, a life within some ‘proper’ world, in which there is no longer an outside world (i.e. no need for reflection) and in which only what is right and perhaps even necessary exists, Hemingway’s characters – faced with overpowering nature, their own death or a necessary subordination to a cause – do not understand the world as ideally static, but strife to change it. Subordination is a means to an end for Hemingway; for Rilke it is the only possible quantum of happiness.

Of course, Rilke also wrote a poem about bullfighting; Corrida. It depicts the confrontation between a primitive urge personified in the black bull, a bundled rage of will (“... to which mass,/heaped up from old black hatred,/and the head clenched into a fist...”) and the superior matador, sublimated into a kind of angelic figure (“...from eternity against him,/who in gold and mauve silk/promptly turns, and/like a swarm of bees/and as if he but suffered it to happen,/lets the startled one pass under his arm...). Rilke was in Ronda out of season for bullfights, freezing, perhaps even in the hotel, which he described as excellent, neutral, expensive and where he met people from Central European high society (Rilke considered himself a natural-born member thereof; Hans Egon Holthusen wrote in his monograph on Rilke that he “insisted on being connected to an old noble family”, regarding himself as the last sublime flowering of a dying family; there was no actual evidence of noble ancestors, though, but the rich cordially welcomed the talented writer). Anyway, Rilke had found a place for his work, albeit a temporary one. His correspondence with Marie von Thurn und Taxis switches from impressions of the city, country and people to reports on the poet’s reading, health and writing. His time in Ronda (about two months) was productive. When the poet left the city and Spain, he had received an impulse for his inner self, inspiration to explore his inner world.

Ronda awarded Rilke a statue in 1966, long before the city’s official commemoration of Hemingway (Franco’s Spain certainly was not inclined to dedicate a monument to an anti-fascist). Rilke is popular in Ronda, a street and even a driving school bear his name, and Ronda’s nickname ”la ciudad soñada”, attributed to Rilke, has a long standing. He, the famous modernist poet with the sad poet’s eyes, is a visitor any decent city would be proud of.

Another difference between the active anti-fascist Hemingway and the poet from Prague, who was, as he wrote somewhere, did not feel responsible for politics, is interesting here. In 1924, Rilke wrote to the Italian Duchess Gallarati Scotti: “What an upswing in Italy, not only in literature but also in public life”, expressing his enthusiasm for Mussolini and Italian fascism. In her reply, Scotti contradicted the poet, writing that she “abhors violence” (in Italy, fascism had just dropped the mask of civilisation with the murder of socialist Giacomo Matteotti). But Rilke did not hear her concern, her plea in favour of the side of life. He wrote: “Freedom is too little; even if moderately and justly applied, it abandons us halfway, in the narrow space of our own reason ... Is this not how dictators, true dictators, have sometimes relieved mankind, by making a salutary and reliable use of force?”  Rilke, who liked to write about angels made of purest light, seemed to have had little time for freedom of will but much sympathy for the creative, healing power of “true dictators”. Perhaps he saw himself in the glaring light of some divine rightfulness, while Scotti and Hemingway hoped a human world to be possible. However, such late attempts at categorisation are at best hints at the zeitgeist of the past. With his writings, Rilke attempted to look into himself, into the human condition. They are a fascinating glimpse into a deep ravine. But whether there is a bridge over Rilke’s troubled abyss is questionable; bridges are products of human endeavours.

Quote from one of the "Travellers of Romanticism“, roughly: "Visiting Ronda, this Moorish city, poetic and unattainable, is one of the highlights of life!"

Ronda and the "Travellers of Romanticism"

From Spain, Rilke wrote to friends in distant Central Europe about the beauty of the towns and places he visited. Of course, he was not the first traveller to pass on such impressions. In Ronda, a wall mosaic framed by quotes commemorates visitors from the 19th century. These were people from wealthier countries who, in a counter-movement to Enlightenment and industrialisation, turned more or less strongly to (unspoilt) nature and a (nobler) past culture, preferring to find these elements in idealised or remote places far away from the modern world. In a way, these so-called Romantics were searching for a lost paradise from which they felt they had been driven by the social and cultural changes in their home countries (by science, which suggested determinism, the absence of free will and the ‘death of God’, by democratic/anti-elitist movements threatening to abolish their privileges, etc.) Perhaps they, forerunners of modern tourism, were just looking for places where they could relax and find solace in their private emotional world, along pretty hiking trails, in picturesque ruins and in often idealised ideas of civilisations long gone. Spain became an early canvas for such escape fantasies. The dramatic landscapes of Andalusia lent themselves to this notion, adorned with fine relics of a culture suppressed by European Christianity. The local Moor was (and is) often described as a noble figure shrouded in legend. Visiting the Alhambra in Granada in particular, some Romantics (and not only these) could imagine themselves in a better world (more on this in Travis Elling, Andalusien anders entdecken).

Tourists admiring the monument to the „Travellers of Romanticism"

The quotes on the above-mentioned panels sometimes seem well-suited for modern-day travel activism. Quoted travellers include the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, on site in 1930 („The air of the mountains, the rising sun, the rising appetite, the variety of picturesque persons and things we met and the impending danger made a delightful life“¹¹) and Lady Louisa Tension, known for illustrated travel books „Ronda is, indeed, one of those places which stands alone. I know of nothing to which it can be compared“¹²)Anyone who delves deeper into the travelogues and letters will also find more idiosyncratic texts that do not necessarily correspond to today’s tourism requirements. For example, Alfred von Wolzogen, a baron, theatre director and author, writes in his Journey to Spain (1852) about a culinary experience in Ronda: “A pastilleria, by which one should not think of a Parisian patisserie, welcomed us in narrow, dull rooms, and spicy oiled dishes seasoned with the terrible ajo (garlic), upset even our bravely famished stomachs”.Wolzogen also mentions the so-called ‘House of the King of the Moors’, which provides access to the bottom of the Tajo: “I have hardly ever come across a more eerie, constricted place. I had to think of Florestan’s dungeon in Fidelio when our little Cicerone told of Al-Motahed, said to have drunk his wine here in this gruesome sandstone gorge called Tajo de Ronda from the skulls of the Christian prisoners he beheaded. That the noble Moor chose this place for such orgies at least proves that he endeavoured to conceal his adventurous tastes from the world”. Here, we should remember that a (pleasant, because distant) sense of foreboding was very much in style with the intrepid romanticist. The ‘Casa del Rey Moro’ is well worth a visit, although the story of Al-Mothahed drinking wine from a skull is almost certainly fiction. However, it is also mentioned in Richard Ford’s handbook for visitors of Spain, published in 1878; Ford also believed the stories about the death of the architect of the Puente Nuevo. At the time of the Moorish rulers, the Casa del Rey Moro was a 600-metre-deep well that, driven by slaves, was probably used to supply the Arab baths with water. It would also have given access to drinking water during sieges. In 1485, the Christians captured the well advancing from the river and dooming the city. The upper residential and other rooms, as well as the hanging gardens hail from a later date. Around 1900, a US citizen acquired the building and ‘discovered’ some rooms underground, which led him to the (romantic) assumption that he was opening up a ‘second Alhambra’ to the world. In 1911, the estate fell into the possession of Countess Trinidad von Scholtz-Hermensdorff (born in Málaga, with German roots), who had the place renovated in the neo-mudéjar style (an architectural variant based on the Moorish style).

Statue for Amiya la Gitana

A solitary statue near the Puente Viejo ...

Besides the famous visitors to the city on the precipice, I would also like to mention a person who can call beautiful Ronda her home town: Ana Amaya Molina, also known as the ‘Queen of the Gypsies’. A statue honouring her stands near to the Puente Viejo, where the ascent to Ronda’s drama begins, at the gates of the old town and in front of the white wall of the Padre Jesús church. The monument is not often sought out by tourists, but is worth a moment of reflection. Amaya Molina was a guitarist and singer known for Canté Jondo, the deep blues of Andalusia. A Spanish dictionary defines this music as “the truest Andalusian song, deep in feeling”. It was introduced to the attentions of the less humble parts of society by the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who used this art form as the inspiration for his book Poema del Cante Jondo (1922): „La guitarra/hace llorar a los sueños./El sollozo de las almas perdidas/se escapa por su boca redonda.“¹³

Lorca mentioned Amaya Molina at a conference organised by him and composer Manuel Fallada in Granada in 1921 on the theme of Cante Jondo. Lorca is today still a popular writer, a true superstar of Andalusian literature. Amaya Molina, hailing from an older time, is but forgotten. The few known photos show her as an old woman, always in traditional costume and with a guitar. We know she moved through the “cafés cantantes” (“cafes of the singers”) of her time - in the absence of playlists, DJs and radios, real live musicians entertained customers. There is even a source that says she liked to sing the following lyrics: „Estoy viviendo en el mundo/Con la Esperanza perdía/No es menester que me entierrren/porque estoy enterrá en vía“¹⁴. . There are also some newspaper reports. On the occasion of her performances in the Andalusian pavilion at the 1930 Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, intended to show Spain’s diversity to international visitors, a newspaper article described Amaya Molina as follows: : “an entertaining person, sings with great vigour despite her age and makes people laugh. She never lets go of her guitar, which she decorated with religious symbols. She drinks 15 to 20 glasses of anis a day. She doesn’t drink water; she says she only uses it to wash herself.”

Anecdotes and trivia … but somehow the mysterious 'Reina de los Gitanos' (the nickname is said to stem from the articles mentioning her in Barcelona in 1930) can be a good starting point to enter a more personal experience of today’s Ronda, especially because there is so little information available. Visitors will just have to dream her up. „Reina de los Gitanos“ (auch der Beiname soll aus den in Barcelona verfassten Artikeln stammen) gerade durch die wenigen Informationen, die verfügbar sind, den Einstieg in eine eigene Erfahrung Rondas erleichtern. Wer Ronda besucht … muss sie sich eben erträumen.

Suggested stroll

Sources, Links, References ...

Ernest Hemingway, „For Whom the Bell Tolls”, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York 1940

Rainer Maria Rilke, “Duineser Elegien“, Insel, Leipzig 1923

Rainer Maria Rilke und Marie von Thurn und Taxis, „Briefwechsel“, Max Niehans Verlag, Zürich, 1951 (Internet Archive, https://archive.org/)

Hans Egon Holthusen, „Rainer Maria Rilke in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten“, Rowohlt, Hamburg, 1958 (Internet Archive, https://archive.org/)

Richard Ford, „A Handbook for Travellers in Spain”, John Murray, London 1878 (Internet Archive, https://archive.org/)

Alfred von Wolzogen, “Reisen nach Spanien“, Hermann Schulze, Leipzig 1857 (Google Library, https://play.google.com/books)

Pierre Vilar, „La guerre Espagnole (1936-1939)“, 1986

Guzmán y Gallo, “Casa del Rey Moro” (Español, Informe, 1910)

European Central Bank (Banknotes) https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/current/design/html/index.de.html#:~:text=Auf%20der%20Vorderseite%20beider%20Euro,Europa%20und%20der%20%C3%BCbrigen%20Welt.

General information about Ronda:

History: https://ronda.ws/ronda-2/historia-de-ronda/

Puente Nuevo: https://www.rondatoday.com/puente-nuevo-and-el-tajo-gorge/

Stele for Hemingway: https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2015/07/29/ronda-statues-to-honour-american-artists-hemingway-and-welles/

Hemingway and Ronda: https://www.surinenglish.com/lifestyle/corrida-goyesca-ronda-when-the-bullfight-the-20230830004028-nt.html

Ernest Hemingway and his growth as a political activist in the 1930ies:  https://www.theartsjournal.org/index.php/site/article/view/1163/564

Analysis of the connection of „For Whom the Bell Tolls” to real events: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Revolution+in+Ronda%3a+the+facts+in+Hemingway’s+%22For+Whom+the+Bell…-a020181962

Review in the New Yorker, 1940: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1940/10/26/ernest-hemingway-crosses-the-bridge

Anaya la Gitana:

https://www.flamencasporderecho.com/anilla-la-de-ronda

1. Unfortunately, the footnotes supplying translations from the German Version have to stay – so we'll just call such footnotes: Void  ↩︎
2. Void ↩︎
3. Void ↩︎
4. Void ↩︎
5. Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" ↩︎
6. Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" ↩︎
7. Donne, Meditation XVII, Devotion ↩︎
8. Void ↩︎
9. Fadiman, „Ernest Hemingway Crosses the Bridge“, New Yorker, 1940 ↩︎
10. When Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls he was 40 years old. What is referred to, of course, is the current mistrust of all pre-millennials, at least all males and "whites", in line with the FRG youth slogan of the 1970s, "Don't trust anyone over 30", i.e. anyone who had experienced the Nazi era. Such a shotgun argument may have had little justification back then, today it tends to have an anti-democratic effect. ↩︎
11. Void ↩︎
12. Void ↩︎
13. Roughly: "The guitar/moves dreams to tears/The sobs of lost souls/escape its round mouth." ↩︎
14. Roughly: "I am in this world/without hope/I eon't need no grave/I am buried in this life." ↩︎