Writers on Ronda

And a vulture hung in air
Below the cliffs of Ronda and below him
His hook-winged shadow wavered like despair
Across the chequered vineyards.

Louis Macneice


"... the incomparable phenomenon of this city, set above two massive stones cut with a pick and separated by the narrow and deep gorge of the river. It could be that other city, revealed in dreams. The spectacle of this city is indescribable, and, around it, a wide valley with working fields, holm oaks and olive trees. And finally, revealed in all its strength, the pure mountains rise, making the most admirable range."
"...for all these reasons it was wonderful to have arrived to Ronda, where everything I wish for can be found: a Spanish city fenced in, in a fantastic and magnificent way..."

Rainer María Rilke


He is from Ronda and his name is
Joaquín Peinado
Who else is as fine and serious a painter?
How tall and strict.
Now, if this painter were a bullfighter..!

Rafael Alberti



The art of bullfighting
was a wonder
because it was created together
by Ronda and Seville.
They put two ways into one
with Illo and with Romero,
Seville and Ronda.
From Seville came the wind
from Ronda the fire:
and they met at the bullfight.

José Bergamín




Islam was made from the swords
which desolated the west and the north
and from the loud crash of armies on the land
and one revelation and one discipline
and the destruction of the idols
and the conversion of everything
and the rose and the Sufi wine
and the rhymed prose of the Koran
and rivers that minarets recite
and the infinite language of the sand
and that other language, algebra
and that long garden, the thousand and one nights
and men talking about Aristotel
and dynasties whose names are now dust
and Tamerlane and Omar, whom they destroyed.
it is here, in Ronda
in the delicate half-light of the blind
a concave silence of courtyards
an idleness of jasmine
and a slight murmur of water,
that they conjured memories of the desert.

Jorge Luis Borges




...strolling in Ronda at dusk, the cypresses, the palaces, the wind from the courts of Cadiz; and an indescribable sky, neither pearl grey, nor silver colour; a suspicion of a very light pale blue that some fierce white light was erasing and balancing with its radiation.

Luis Cernuda



Round mountain range,
bullring of Ronda.
And the bullfight´s light
measures its ripples...
my pure Ronda,
bullring of restless light ,
everlasting rose.

Gerardo Diego



The little houses of this Ronda street, with its forged grills on the ground floor windows, seem to grow a belly.
These others have first floor grills... like foreheads leaning.
As if from one side of the street to the other they want to come near and whisper something malicious about the people passing.

Eugenio D'Ors




Health and peace, rocks, mountains, bushes,
tree groves, streams;
health, peace and joy,
nobility, friends, blood, my fatherland

Vicente Espinel



... The girls came shouting
in painted carriages
with round fans
embroidered with sequins.
And the youths of Ronda
grey wide hats,
set to the eyebrows,
on conceited ponies
The bullring, with the crowd
(all hats and high combs)
turned like a zodiac
of black and white laughs.
And when the great Cayetano
crossed the straw-colored sand
wearing a suit the colour of apples,
embroidered with silver and silk,
detaching himself gracefully
from the hard, down to earth crowd
to face the vicious bulls
which Spain raises on its land,
it seemed as if the evening
was becoming darker.

Federico García Lorca (Mariana Pineda)




We finally saw Ronda. It was set on the top of the mountain, like a natural extension of the landscape, and in the sunlight, it seemed to me the most beautiful city in the world.

Juan Goytisolo



Ronda is the place where to go, if you are planning to travel to Spain for a honeymoon or for being with a girlfriend. The whole city and its surroundings are a romantic set. Nice promenades, good wine, excellent food, nothing to do...

Ernest Hemingway



"Where is that captivation, that passion of a typical Andalusian city, the best town, that old stronghold, that stopped time?. This is it, here. It is Ronda, Serranía de Ronda."

"Ronda high and deep, round, profound, round and high..."

Juan Ramón Jiménez


... and Ronda with its old inn's windows, the eyes spying hidden after the lattices, so that the lover can kiss the iron grills of the window, and the tavern with its doors half-opened at night and the castanets and the night we lost the Algeciras ship, the guard making his patrol with his lantern and, oh, that awful deep torrent, oh, and the red sea, sometimes like the fire and the glorious sunset and the fig trees at the Tajo's tree-lined Avenue, yes, and the strange little streets ,and the rose, yellow and blue houses, and the gardens full of roses and jasmines, and geraniums and cactus.

James Joyce (Ulysses)



In Ronda there is one of the world's most incredible"Tajos" (gorges). It seems like a giant tried to do a surgical operation on the planet that he later abandoned leaving the patient open and unstitched.
In Ronda there are many streets that should carry a sign for tourists: "To the chaos". In every landscape or every city that the tourist goes, he will see a sign ordering him "to the Cathedral", "to the Museum". But in Ronda, there are many streets that come to us...The Tajo doesn't have any kind of agreement with the guides. You look to the bottom of it and you can find there in the depths fear, predictions, prayers or verses.

José María Pemán



Early moon ringing
The bullring of Ronda,
The multiple wonder,
A city, deep yet winging
A moon of round stone flinging
Down a golden flower
On the ground, the lower
Of the proud mountain range;
Wild moon, what will emerge,
From that magic brilliance of yours?

Pedro Pérez Clotet


The white path climbs
slithering from Ronda to Grazalema.
It clears the working fields, it gets lost
towards the hard stones.
Mountains break through the ridges
and with the light my heart goes far away.
As it comes back
in my eyes the hemmed-in land is a
brave little universe

Dionisio Ridruejo



Ronda, bullring
of macho bullfighters,
your balconies demand
one Carmen for each box;
one Romero for each bull,
a knight on a horse
and two bandits who ask for
the key with their pistols.
Bullring of Ronda,
And of macho bullfighters.

Fernando Villalón