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| Ruins of the old Moorish castle of Cártama.
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If Cártama impresses the
visitor now, as it does, how much more impressive it must have been
in its Roman heyday. Not only impressive, but daunting, for it was
the site of a formidable fortress. The reason is not hard to find.
It stands at the navigable head of the rio Guadalhorce
and the castle protected both the town and the river valley.
Secure in its fatherly embrace,
the town flourished as a processor of marble and a trading town
for the rich supply of raw minerals from the hills. It became rich
and fashionable, and was noted for its fine baths and villas, and
glorious statues of its favourite gods, Mars and Venus.
So important does Cártama
appear to have been to the Romans that they bestowed on one member
of a prominent local family the magistratical office of decemvir
- one of only three in the entire Baetican province, which in essence
coincides with present-day Andalucía.
As the Roman grip on Spain weakened,
Cártama's wealth and influence began to wane. In languished
through the Visigothic period, but attracted the attentions of the
moors, who clearly valued it almost as highly as the Romans. The
old castle was in ruins, but the Moors rebuilt it and Cártama
was on its way again.
In the dying days of Moorish rule,
the unstoppable Christians decided that Cártama was the perfect
place from which to lay siege to the big prize of Málaga.
It was 1485, and the Moors of Cártama had little stomach
for a fight. The town fell easily, and the final siege of Málaga
was set.
Though the statues and the villas
and the trappings of wealth are now less than memories, the ruins
of the castle still stubbornly stand guard high on the hilltop overlooking
the town. They can be reached, but only after a strenuous climb.
Below them, but still high above
Cártama's twisting streets, is the shrine of Nuestra
Señora de los Remedios - the town's patron saint - which
is still a focus of reverent pilgrimage for the locally devout.
During the Civil War of 1936-39, the statue of the Virgin was taken
from the shrine by the Nationalists to protect it from possible
destruction at the hands of anti-clerical Republicans. It was taken
to South America and used to raise funds for Franco's cause, only
returning to its home on the mountainside once the war was won.
Though Cártama has lost much
of the lustre it has, it does have an odd place in Spanish literature.
In 1565, Antonio de Villegas published the romantic story of Jarifa
and Abindarráez - a romantic tale concerning the love of
the daughter of the mayor of Cártama for a man she thought,
mistakenly, to be her brother. In time the story was retold by writers
as renowned as Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Chateaubriand, assuring
it of literary immortality. Love, it seems, really does outlive
riches.
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