EN 09 EL TORCAL: A GARDEN IN STONE

The scars in the stone skin tell a story so old it sounds like legend. It is a story about a prehistoric sea known as “Tethys” that used to submerge the rocky landscape that now defies the sun. A sea that is quite difficult to imagine, inhabited by stone beings carved right out of the bottom of the earth. A landscape populated with fanciful shapes, imaginary beings, volatile summits, soaring crests, twisted rocks, impossible balances… According to Málaga-born poet Salvador Rueda, this place used to be home to disturbing individuals and archaic forces:

El Torcal is heraldic; it combines
Dungeons and dragons in stone
And, like giant dominoes, it lines
Up swirling towers with broken rocks.

Rafael de la Linde christened the shapes with names of cathedrals, glorious temples, and inspiring muses:

Your proud sierra with its rocks
Forges temples and cathedrals,
Weaves illusions and dreams,
Majestic Torcal, brave sierra,
Hiding poetic treasures
You are the poison of inspiration!

The poets are right. There is more than one reason to dedicate beautiful, heartfelt words to El Torcal, a natural area spanning both Antequera and Villanueva de la Concepción. The winding and narrow alleyways between these amazing geological formations could contain all possible legends. There live in El Torcal as many imaginary beings as you can see in the rocks, carved by water, wind, and rain under earth forces that make oceans disappear and mountains emerge in their stead. You should not expect a theme park here, for there is no such thing. There is just the astounding, chaotic, savage, and resistant work of Nature. Welcome to El Torcal, the garden in stone.

El Torcal Natural Area

This place has a long history. The transformation of this rocky area into a natural area is very old. Local inhabitants and visitors soon realised this was a valuable area, and so they turned it into a Site of National Interest in 1929, a Nature Park in 1978, and a Natural Area now. El Torcal is the most important karst topography in Spain and Europe. It is the geomorphology that makes it so special. Here the rocks have been eroded, dissolved, and polished, giving rise to flabbergasting mutations into dragons, ships, or human faces. And this has all happened in a surface area of 20sq km, in a Protected Natural Area of 1,171ha. On misty days, if you look at El Torcal from Villanueva de la Concepción, you will experience a magical feeling that scientists have taken pains to record. The power of research + imagination has made the place even more special. Now we know a lot about El Torcal, but still we can imagine a lot about it if we want to. We now know that El Torcal comprises four distinct areas: Sierra Pelada, Torcal Alto, Torcal Bajo, and Las Escaleruelas y Cortijo del Navazo Verde. We also know that the peaks are separated by unfathomable abysses: Azul (114m deep), Sima de la Mujer (90m), or Sima de la Unión (143m). And that there are caves like Marinaleda (where burial pottery has been found) or Toro (housing meso-neolithic archaeological remains inside). Both geologically and archaeologically, El Torcal is a rich area. But its richness has to do with biodiversity too. 116 vertebrate species (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) have been found and classified. Moreover, it is a Special Bird Protection Area, so you can usually spot ominous yet majestic birds of prey flying over your head in circles. It would be preposterous to make a list of all the bird species you can find in El Torcal, so let us name the most common ones: golden eagles, griffon vultures, peregrine falcons, Eurasian eagle-owls, blue tits, and European goldfinches. Reptiles are abundant, too: ocellated lizards, snub-nosed viper (be careful with these!), Montpellier snakes, and lizards. Mammals are perhaps more visible: Spanish ibexes (they are ever-present), foxes, badgers, rabbits… Now pay attention to numbers: against 116 recorded vertebrate species, 664 plant species live in El Torcal, including lichens, moss plants, ferns, and spermatophytes. The largest plant community is that of rock plants, which use any crack to grow. Water (aquifers) plays a silent yet all-important role in El Torcal, crowning and toppling mountains with an inveterate subtlety in the form of raindrops, leakages, dew, and mist attached to the skin of rocks and solidifying into snow or ice. Water is the architect of El Torcal, the sea that left the traces of its salty past in the form of fossils. Besides all these scientific facts, there are the creatures of the imagination. In El Torcal you will find hidden dinosaurs, galleons run aground at the top of a mountain, old totems, fearful sphinxes, camels, you name it. All these figures have nothing to do with reason; they appeal to the fables you want to create in your mind. Let my tour of El Torcal begin. I have been here before, but every time I come, it is a brand-new experience.

The Tour

My car zigzags along the dark tongue of the road like one of those Montpelier snakes living in El Torcal. The landscape in Antequera and Villanueva de la Concepción is yellow and ochre, peppered with the white strokes of “cortijos.” Gradually, it gives way to something new. It is amazing in a way different from anything you have seen before, even when still in the car. Grey shades here and there, white rocky outcrops, impossible sculptures, mounds. The fields (not apt for farming) are everywhere interrupted by rocks: a thousand rises in a thousand sizes. Words like “lunar,” “Martian,” or “ET” immediately come to mind. A naked area, categorical and fascinating. I keep zigzagging in my car until I reach the parking area next to the visitor centre, which can hold about 100 cars. When it is full, a free bus service takes visitors from the road to the centre to avoid unnecessary jams. Climbers with their gear (and their permission), families, well-trained hikers, national and international tourists, biologists… they are all here. The best time of year to study the local fauna is the late spring or the early autumn, when you can watch all the animals in their ever-changing, profuse communities. Before choosing one of the two routes across El Torcal, you should visit the visitor centre, where you will learn how this natural area came into being, how Nature transformed the ocean into a garden made of stone. Information boards, sounds, smells, touch… A journey of the senses (minus taste) across El Torcal. It is a modern visitor centre, efficiently fulfilling educational tasks and giving information on the various geomorphological systems. It is ideal for experts to check what they already know and for neophytes to learn a lot of interesting things. With all this knowledge inside my head, I set out on my tour. As I said before, there are two routes to explore El Torcal. Both of them are circular, and they have one section in common. The Green Route is an easy to moderately difficult route that takes 45’ to complete. The Yellow Route is also easy to moderately difficult, but longer (120’). The Green Route gives an overview of El Torcal, including a nice sample of formations. The Yellow Route guarantees an in-depth approach to the whole system. Both run inside the natural area, using broken dirt roads, so remember to bring comfy shoes and water. You could add your camera, binoculars, and cap to the gear. My choice: the Green Route. In a sort of mysterious game, the trail first hides and then, all of sudden, shows the heart of El Torcal. It is a world in which imagination reigns supreme –a world of dragons, pirate ships, giants wearing extravagant hats, hands making all sorts of gestures, Indian totems, prehistoric animals, castle walls and battlements. You will probably come across fellow visitors. However, the area is silent, and the soundtrack of Nature prevails over the noise of man. As I walk, I feel the millenary rocks beneath my feet, I comment on this or that formation, I take pictures, and I let go. Everything seems to be impossible at El Torcal, and suddenly I am seized by a barrage of questions: How can that wall stand up? How can this rock be in this position? How can? How come? It seems not possible, but Nature shows you that you are wrong: it is possible. It is there. The trail is clearly signposted. You cannot get lost. Whenever you get to a path fork, a sign tells you which way to go. And this is how I get to the fork connecting the Green Route with the Yellow Route. I leave the latter behind and move on. I spot some goats and a few slippery lizards too. Then I reach a cirque dominated by a 25m-high wall. It is quite overwhelming, with its damp, even wooded walls. My voice reverberates and comes back to me, as if I were in an echo chamber. Then I enter a narrower path, lined by trees and white rocks. Being yellowish, it somehow reminds me of the yellow brick road in “The Wizard of Oz.” In fact, the rocks seem to have been arranged by a magician. Other visitors, kids included, are playing the same game as me: trying to see things in the rocks. With so many visitors a day, El Torcal continues to be indomitable, a place ready to close upon itself at any time, or just when man stops walking down its trails. It gives you that kind of empty feeling. Metaphysics aside, El Torcal is an ideal place for kids, to stimulate their imagination as they try to find images where there are only rocks, as they construct their own imagery in the wood of stone. The last section before getting back to the visitor centre is a climb leading to another cirque and a walkway to the viewpoint of Las Ventanillas. I feel as if I had emerged from a magical world. But the viewpoint brings me back to reality, as I can see the village of Villanueva de la Concepción at my feet, protecting the secrets of El Torcal, the Mountains of Málaga and the Mediterranean to the east. The Mediterranean: the little heir of Tethys, the ancient water sheet that used to cover each and every one of the rocks you can see or step on today. The breeze brushes past my face. I turn around and there it is again: El Torcal, a secret in the heart of Málaga, and enchanted garden made of stone. Now let us head to our next natural area, very near here: the Natural Monument of El Tornillo del Torcal.

Farewell

Walking slowly down the trail, I enjoy the silent sound of stone, the perfume of flowers, the brightness of colours. I look up and spot a bird of prey, flying against the bright blue sky. I am getting used to the fanciful formations; I can understand the shapes now give meaning to them, have them fit characters in stories or films. But I am still surprised. I smile and walk on, painting more imaginary beings with the finger of my imagination. I am in El Torcal, but these shapes could take me wherever I wanted to be.

Travel Tips and Useful Links

Useful links: To read more about El Torcal, visit the websites of Costa del Sol Tourist Board and Government of Andalusia, A Visitor’s Window into Natural Areas. Also, the websites of Villanueva de la Concepción and Antequera Town Halls contain useful information to plan your visit.

Country travel: The region of Antequera and its area of influence feature three natural areas: El Torcal, El Tornillo del Torcal, and Pinar del Hacho. If you want to visit all three without winding up exhausted, you can stay at a country hotel with fully-equipped facilities. You can come in the summer, for most of them have swimming pools. “El Torcal” Country Travel Southern Association offers a full catalogue of country hotels very close to all three natural areas. This time, I stayed with my usual companion and nine other travellers at Villa Alba.


Images: Here you can see all the photos of this blog entry.



Geolocation: Find the exact location of this natural area on the Google map below.


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Thanks to Jon, Mariví, Arregui, Paco, Sara, Andrés, Pepa, Rosamari, Jesús and specially to Antonia.