Local old men in the Istan village square.
Istán
is one of a number of villages of Moorish origin which owes its
survival to its distance from the coast. After the Christian reconquest
of the Iberian peninsula in the 15th Century, Arabs were barred
from living within a league of the shoreline in order to prevent
them from communicating with their kinsmen across the straits in
Morocco. Istán, 15 kilometres inland, was allowed to remain while
the coastal Arab settlements were depopulated and frequently destroyed.
 That
is not to say that the mountain villages were unmolested and left
in peace. The post-reconquest years were turbulent ones which frequently
erupted into violence which resulted in harsh and unforgiving repression
for the remaining Moors. Istán was lucky. Two associated villages
- Arboto and Daidin - were erased from the landscape so effectively
that their precise locations are no longer known. Even so, the Arab
population dwindled, and was largely replaced by Christian settlers
from Castile and Murcia. So many came from the Murcian village of
El Cristo de Panocho, that the people of Istán acquired a nickname
- panochos - which has survived to this day.
The
village is tucked away beneath the Sierra Blanca at the head of
the valley of the rio Verde, close to the Serrania de Ronda hunting
reserve. To reach it, leave the N-340 coastal highway 5 kilometres
south of Marbella just beyond the Hotel Puente Romano.
As
with so many mountain villages, creations of a time and place in
which the only practical means of transport was the mule and the
packhorse, Istán's streets are narrow and unsuited to the motor
car. The only sensible way to experience it is on foot.
There are four à la carte restaurants in Istán, Troyano, El Baron, Rincon de Curro,
Entresierras and the new Las Harales in the Rural Hotel at the entrance of the
village. There are also bars that serve an excellent selection of
tapas. It does boast one hotel, though it had to wait until 1998
to acquire it. Whether that heralds an influx of foreign visitors
who may become the nucleus of a large expatriate community remains
to be seen, but for the time being Istán remains closer to its roots
than many of its cousins.
The village aptly echoes night and
day to the sound of water running constantly from its drinking fountains.
Aptly, because it stands close to the huge reservoir created by
the Presa de la Concepción dam, which was
built in 1972 and provides drinking water to towns all along the
coast. The water feeding Istán's fountains, however, is the
pure, unprocessed mountain variety which was much prized long before
the coming of the dam. Just outside the village, where it cascades
freely from the rocks, motorists often stop to fill their jugs and
cans.
Very
little remains of Moorish Istán, merely the crumbling remains of
a tower hidden in a side street, but at least there is some, and
the village still has the timeless air that outsiders find so appealing.
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