Salobreña
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Salobreña (, < Phoenician ''Salambina Salawbiniya'') is a town on the ''
Costa Tropical Costa Granadina is a comarca in southern Spain, corresponding to the Mediterranean coastline of the province of Granada. It is also but less frequently called the Costa Tropical or Costa de Granada. It is crossed by the N-340 coastal highway th ...
'' in Granada, Spain. It claims a history stretching back 6,000 years. There are two main parts of Salobreña; The first is The Old Town which sits atop a rocky prominence and is a cluster of whitewashed houses and steep narrow streets leading up to a tenth-century Moorish castle, called 'Castillo de Salobreña' and it is one of its main tourist attractions. The second part of Salobreña is new developments which spread from the bottom of the Old Town right to the beach. The whole town is almost surrounded by sugarcane fields on each side along the coast and further inland. Another tourist attraction in Salobreña is 'El Peñón' (The Rock), which divides two of Salobreña's five beaches and juts out between Playa La Guardia and Playa de la Charca/Solamar and into the sea.


History


Geological background

At the close of the last glacial maximum, the Motril-Salobreña plain on which Salobreña now stands was not yet land: rather it was a large bay studded with a number of dolomite crags which were islands, most prominently the formation now known as Monte Hacho (73m) and the headland on which Salobreña now stands (110m). The
Guadalfeo The Guadalfeo is a small river in the province of Granada, Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further ...
river drained into the bay, running down the Tajo de los Vados gorge which separates the Sierra de Escalate to the north-east of Salobreña from the Sierra de Chaparral to the west. The river gradually filled the bay with silt comprising post-
orogenic Orogeny is a mountain building process. An orogeny is an event that takes place at a convergent plate margin when plate motion compresses the margin. An ''orogenic belt'' or ''orogen'' develops as the compressed plate crumples and is uplifted t ...
, miocenic, and quaternary material, producing a fertile alluvial plain, on which agriculture could begin by the Bronze Age. At this time, the outcrop on which the old town of Salobreña now stands had become a peninsula. Meanwhile, the rocky outcrop of the Peñon, which now juts from La Guardia beach into the sea, remained an island into the seventeenth century. A map of 1722 is the first evidence that the beach had reached it, making it a peninsula.


Ancient

Archaeological finds show human habitation around Salobreña at the rocky promontory known as the Peñon beginning in the
Neolithic period The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
, when the Peñon was still an island, with strata perhaps beginning as early as the palaeolithic period and continuing into the
Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
at the Cueva del Capitán (Captain's Cave) in the nearby hamlet of Lobres. Evidence of Bronze Age settlement from around 1500 BCE has also been found on the Salobreña headland and, slightly further inland again, Monte Hacho. Such settlements would have been characteristic of the settlement of easily defensible rocky headlands in the region at the time. Salobreña is thought to have experienced contact with the
Phoenicians Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...
around the eighth century BCE and then Greek and Punic culture around the sixth. At this time, its name is attested as ''Selambina''. A major impact of Roman culture is, however, visible for the second century BCE, attested in widespread archaeological finds.


Medieval

In 713 CE, the region of Elvira (roughly corresponding to the Province of Granada today) came under the Arab rule of Mūsa bin Nusayr, and by the tenth century, a castle (''ḥiṣn'') at Salobreña is recorded in Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Musa al-Razi's '' Crónica del moro Rasis''. Al-Razi also noted the introduction of the cultivation of
sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus '' Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalk ...
at Salobreña. The main crop of medieval Salobreña was sugar-cane, though other attested crops include cumin and bananas. By the eleventh century,
Ibn Hayyan Abū Marwān Ḥayyān ibn Khalaf ibn Ḥusayn ibn Ḥayyān al-Qurṭubī () (987–1075), usually known as Ibn Hayyan, was a Muslim historian from Al-Andalus. Born at Córdoba, his father was an important official at the court of the Andalusi ...
could refer to Salobreña as a ''medina'' ('town'), a denomination that became usual by the fourteenth century, when Salobreña was the seat of government for surrounding hamlets like Vélez de Benaudalla, Molvizar, and Lobres. In 1489, Granada came under Castilian rule, and Francisco Ramirez de Madrid became governor of Salobreña's fortress and town. The next year, the inhabitants of the town supported the resistance of
Muhammad XII of Granada Abu Abdallah Muhammad XII ( ar, أبو عبد الله محمد الثاني عشر, Abū ʿAbdi-llāh Muḥammad ath-thānī ʿashar) (c. 1460–1533), known in Europe as Boabdil (a Spanish rendering of the name ''Abu Abdallah''), was the ...
to Castilian rule, which speeded the increase of Castilian migration into the settlement. In 1568-69, the
Moriscos Moriscos (, ; pt, mouriscos ; Spanish for "Moorish") were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Roman Catholic church and the Spanish Crown commanded to convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed the ope ...
of Salobreña participated in revolts.


Modern

Sugar-cane remained key to the town's economy through the sixteenth century, returning to prominence in the nineteenth. In between, cotton became the dominant crop. The early-modern history of Salobreña is not well understood. In the nineteenth century, however, Salobreña was strategically important in the Spanish War of Independence, and also adopted new steam-technologies for sugar production pioneered in
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
. The expansion of the town in the second half of the nineteenth century that was driven by a boom in sugar-cane production led to the demolition of the last remains of its medieval walls. By the 1970s, settlement was expanding from the outcrop on which the old town sits onto the alluvial plain below. Today, the economy of the coastal plain around Salobreña is based on tourism and sugarcane agriculture, while the mountains are characterised by terraced agriculture with almond and, increasingly, sub-tropical fruit trees (with custard apples and avocado pears being the first to be introduced). The last remaining cane sugar factory in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
was located along the coast just west of the village of La Caleta de Salobreña. It closed in 2006.


Climate

Salobreña's climate is a Mediterranean, semi-arid climate, with annual rainfall of 500mm per year, and whose microclimate is sub-tropical. In the hotter months, average temperatures are around 26 °C, peaking in August around the mid 30 °C's during the day and mid 20 °C's at night and around 13 °C in the colder months. The annual average temperature is 19 °C.''Salobreña: Rutas y senderos / Countryside Paths and Walks'', ed. by Juan Manuel Pérez, trans. by Deborah Green (Salobreña: Ayuntamiento de Salobreña, 2009), , p. 17.


References


External links


Everything you need to know about Salobreña, Spain - with beautiful photos!
{{DEFAULTSORT:Salobrena Municipalities in the Province of Granada Seaside resorts in Spain