Mollina – Malaga

Little remains of either Neolithic or Roman Mollina in Malaga province, 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 Santillan, originally a settlement built around a Roman villa and surrounding outbuildings covering an area of 1400 square metres. Later, the Castellum was reinforced with defensive walls, a sign of the upheavals in this part of Andalucia in Roman times.

Today, the present town 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 Andalucian 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 Senora de la Oliva. Mollina in Malaga won independence from nearby Antequera at the beginning of the 19th century, although at that time Andalucia’s agriculture was in decline. After that in 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 Malaga.

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.