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San Juan de Letran church.
David
wood reports
Arriate
is a jack-in-the-box; a surprise package in a plain wrapper. Enter
it from any direction, and it appears to be a sleepy rural village
waiting, with no sense of urgency, for its grass to grow and its
paint to dry. Then, abracadabra! - a corner is turned and the visitor
is suddenly thrown into the sophisticated high street of a chic
and bustling small town, full of high-class stores selling quality
goods, and crowds who obviously have money enough to buy them. It
is difficult not to be reminded of the magical moment in the classic
film version of The Wizard of Oz, when the pictures on the screen
turn unexpectedly from black and white into glorious technicolor.
With an area of only 9 square kilometres, Arriate
is the smallest municipal district in the province of Málaga,
surrounded on all sides by land belonging to one of the largest
- Ronda. Until 1630, it was part of the Ronda municipality itself,
but in that year the inhabitants got together, had a whip-round,
and raised enough money to buy their freedom.
Long
before even Ronda had a name, the Iberians were here, and before
them cave dwellers in the hills beside the Rio Guadalcobarin. For
about four hundred years, beginning around the 8th Century BC, a
complex and lively Iberian settlement existed, comprising at least
three related hill forts. Cerro del Coto was particularly suited
for the siting of a defensive fort, and archæological finds
have confirmed that all of the interacting communities traded with
the passing Phœnicians.
 The
road from Ronda to the town of Setenil de las Bodegas (the best
means of access to Arriate) is straight enough to convince many
historians that it owes its existence to the Romans. This may well
be true also of the bridge that marks the present day site of the
village at Arroyo de la Ventilla. Certainly in Roman times homesteads
were constructed on both sides of the bridge, and at least two nearby
mills have been shown to have Roman origins.
By
using the term "village" for the Arriate of Moorish times
we may well be guilty of exaggeration. It was in truth no more than
a single large farmstead, or cortijo, which bore the obviously Moorish
name of Arriadh. From this the modern name of Arriate is derived.
The word has two meanings. In horticulture, it refers to a trellis,
or border. Its other meaning, which would appear more relevant,
is road, or path; perhaps a reassuring hint to travellers bound
from Ronda to Setenil, or vice versa, that they were on the right
track, and not becoming hopelessly lost.
The
eight centuries of Moorish occupation were tranquil ones for Arriate,
if judged by its table of appearances in the historical record.
There is but one. In the year 1407, an enterprising Christian commander,
Hernando Arias, eager to do his bit for the reconquest and write
his name large in the chronicles of glory, rode out of Cañete
la Real with his troops and threw a few punches at the Moors in
the Arriate valley. Though the fighting, such as it was, would have
been eclipsed by many a Saturday night pub brawl, chroniclers (no
doubt in the pay of Sr Arias) dubbed it a "battle". Battle
or not, it was well ahead of its time. Ronda, of which Arriate was
still an integral part, did not fall to the Christians until 1484,
by which time Hernando Arias was long dead and almost as long forgotten.
The
failure of Arias to subdue the local Moors and sweep on to a famous
victory may be due to many factors. He may have been a buffoon.
He may have been unfortunate. He may have been betrayed. Whatever
the truth, it certainly suggests that despite consisting of a single
homestead, Arriate must have had some form of serious fortification
guarding the bridge.
After
1484, and the final expulsion of the Moors from the area, Arriate
developed rapidly, though it remained in the shadow of the surrounding
power of Ronda until its management buy-out in 1630. A measure of
independence was granted in 1635, and this was formalised with the
granting of a charter in 1661 by King Felipe IV.
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