Property & Real Estate
There has been a human settlement on the site of this small town
(current population just over 3,500) since Neolithic times. Just
15km north-west of Antequera
on the A92, on the lower slopes of the Sierra de Mollina, this is
set in perfect olive and cereal country. It is also a mere ten km
from the Laguna de Fuente de la Piedra lake, famous for its pink
flamingos.
The
name derives in fact from a milling tower, the Torre Mollina (similar
to the Costa's Torremolinos), which vanished some time in the Middle
Ages. An alternative theory claims the name originates with its
Roman rulers and derives from the Latin 'mollis', suave, or bland.
Little
remains of either Neolithic or Roman Mollina, beyond some Neolithic
artefacts found in the neighbouring Sierra de la Camorra, and, seven
km from Mollina itself, the rectangular shaped Roman mausoleum of
La Capuchina. Four km outside town there are the ruins of the fort
of Castellum of Santillán, originally a settlement built
around a Roman villa and surrounding outbuildings covering an area
of 1400 square metres. The Castellum was later reinforced with defensive
walls, a sign of the upheavals in this part of Andalucía
in Roman times.
The
present town, however, dates mainly from a more peaceful time, the
16th century, when the Reconquest was won and the lands parcelled
out for farming to the victors. Thus the peacetime Mollina grew
up around a convent, the Convent de la Ascension, rather than a
fortified encampment like many Andalucían towns. (Don't miss
the handsome sundial on the covent façade.) At its agricultural
peak, Mollina's olive groves were so productive that the parish
church of San Cayetano, built in 1687, was changed to Nuestra Señora
de la Oliva.
Mollina
won independence from nearby Antequera at the beginning of the 19th century, although at that time Andalucía's
agriculture was in decline. Since the 1960s, the population has
dwindled as the young head to the coast to work. Yet Mollina still
produces a surprising 80 per cent of the wine made in the province
of Málaga.
The
main hotel (there are only two), the hotel Molino del Saydo, a few
kilometres south, is an example of a typical Spanish roadside hotel
that has suffered from the loss of passing traffic, following the
construction of the A92 Seville-Granada motorway in the early 1990s.
The land at the back of the hotel is now a residential caravan park.
The hotel has a large open air swimming pool, popular with villagers
and visitors alike in the summer.
Mollina
has four major annual festivals. The Candelaria, or candle-lit procession,
is celebrated on the first day of February, and in May there is
a Romería, or procession into the country, in honour of the
Virgen de la Oliva. The town's summer feria is early, in the second
week of August, but that is perhaps to make way for possibly the
most important festival, the wine harvest festival, or Feria de
la Vendimia, in the second week of September.
Tourist information
Town Hall
C/La Villa, 3. 29532.
Tel: 952 740 000.
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