Today I'll share some pictures from the lovely Spanish town Ronda, which lies in the Málaga Hills (Sierra de Málaga, or officially Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park. ), in the Southern province of Andalucia. As explained in the English Wikipedia: "Ronda is known for its cliff-side location and a deep chasm that carries the Guadalevín River and divides the town." It is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) away from the city of Málaga. While human settlement dates back to the Neolithic Age, Ronda's foundation is of Roman origin, and it thrived during the Islamic occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. But it declined during the Spanish civil war in the mid twentieth cntury, which lead to depopulation.
In Andalucia, bullfighting is sill legal, and indeed popular. Ronda's Romero family played a key role in the modern bullfighting tradition, "responsible for such innovations as the use of the cape, or muleta, and a sword especially designed for the kill" (from the Wikipedia). Pedro Romero "is considered the first matador to truly conceive of the bullfight as an art and a skill in its own right, and not simply as a clownishly macho preamble to the bull's slaughter" (from Bullfighting in Ronda - History, Culture, Tradition). I am personally against bullfighting, and I think it should be forbidden, but I know it can be very difficult to ban historical traditions, often requiring generational changes.
