Spain Trip May 2025 - Part 8 Setenil de las Bodegas, Andalucia

We have visited a number of these 'white villages' but I think they are generally a bit overrated. Not this place though! Setenil is an unusual town, built around the curves of a small stream winding its way through a small gorge. Cave dwellings (or troglodyte houses) have been inhabited here for hundreds of years, in fact there is history here going back to the Romans, and possibly well before.

There are a number of streets where the buildings have been built underneath the natural rock roof and like other cave dwellings, the rocks provide warmth in winter and coolness in summer. This particular street, Calle Cuevas del Sol, is full of bars and shops. 

You can see in the photo above, there are buildings built above and in fact this is where a lot of the town is, higher up. It's quite hard to make sense of a map in places, as parts of the roads are hidden!

The little stream, Rio Trejo.

Calle Cuevas de la Sombre, which means shady street, is on the other side of the stream.

As some of the houses have been demolished it allows us to see the size of this house - it's tiny! Yet it looks inhabited. I suppose it is possible that some of the houses have excavated further into the rock face to make more space. I do wonder how many times these buildings may have been flooded though over the centuries. You get a flash flood in a place like that and there isn't that much room for raging water before it gets to house level.

I loved this lady's tiny outside space with the tiles and all those plants! Next door looked interesting with that wonderful wooden door, too.

Interesting rock surface and the pink flowers are all Sedums growing out of the rock.

Must be very dark and gloomy in some of those houses!

I certainly wouldn't choose to live in a house with a massive rock looming over me like that! But it makes for a scenic and interesting place for us tourists to visit.

We were going to visit Ronda next, but the weather got more and more overcast the closer we got. We parked up in the town and the heaven's opened. We thought we'd put the kettle on (the joys of a motorhome 😀), have a cup of tea and wait for a bit. But it kept on raining. Now the last time K and I were in Spain, we planned to visit Ronda. In fact we stayed at an aire in the town the night before - up the other end of the town from the scenic bit. The next morning it was pouring with rain, and we would have to take a bus to get to the interesting part of town. We decided to give it a miss and headed north, way north, to where the sun was shining! We've decided that Ronda and us are not a good mix and that we may never get to see the town, ever! Well, maybe third time lucky.

I didn't take any photos of us at Setenil so here's one of me at dinner at the campsite that evening. That was fish underneath a sauce that looked like custard, served with a strange rice dish with nuts and raisins. It was a bit dry. 😀

A map showing our route from Gibraltar to Setenil, via the Monarch walk.