4K Drive | Almuñécar to La Cala del Moral | Granada & Málaga Region | Spain | 2024 | #76

Starting just outside Almuñécar, we drive towards La Cala del Moral following the E-15, A-7 highway along the coast.
Filmed in February 2024.
Almuñécar (Spanish pronunciation: [almuˈɲekaɾ]) is a Spanish city and municipality located in the southwestern part of the comarca of the Costa Granadina, in the province of Granada. It is located on the shores of the Mediterranean sea and borders the Granadin municipalities of Otívar, Jete, Ítrabo and Salobreña, and with the Malagueño municipality of Nerja. The Verde river runs through its territory. The municipality of sexitano includes the population centers of Almuñécar -municipal capital-, La Herradura, Velilla-Taramay, Torrecuevas, Río Seco, El Rescate and El Cerval.
Since 1975, the town has become one of the most important tourist towns in Granada province and on the Costa Granadina; it has good transport connections and a football (soccer) stadium.
Almuñécar is an important setting in Laurie Lee's account of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, and referred to as "Castillo" to disguise people's identities.
Almuñécar's coat of arms, which shows the turbaned heads of three Barbary pirates floating in the sea, was granted to the town by King Carlos I in 1526 for its having destroyed a Berber raiding force.
Trinidad Herrera is the first woman to be elected mayor of Almuñecar. The city council elected Herrera, local leader of the People's Party (Partido Popular), on 11 June 2011.
Almuñécar began as a Phoenician colony named Sexi, and even today, some of its inhabitants still call themselves Sexitanos. Under the Moors, Almuñécar blossomed as the fishing town of al-Munakkab (Arabic: المُنَكَّب) or Ḥiṣn-al-Munakkab (حصن المنكب). Although the Phoenician and Roman history of the district was known from Greek and Roman sources it was not until the 1950s that significant archaeological evidence was discovered.
The Phoenicians first established a colony in Almuñécar in about 800 BC and this developed for six hundred years into an important port and town with the name of Ex or Sexi and with a large fish salting and curing industry that was a major supplier of Greece and Rome. They also supplied a prized fish paste called garum made from the intestines of small fishes by a process of fermentation. Archaeological evidence comes chiefly from Phoenician cemeteries, the earlier Laurita necropolis on the hillside at Cerro San Cristobal and the later necropolis at Punte de Noy. An extensive collection of Phoenician grave goods and other artifacts is on display in the town museum located at the Castle of San Miguel and in the 'Cueva de Siete Palacios'.
The Romans came to southern Spain at the time of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage in 218 BC as part of their campaign to subdue the Phoenician settlements along the coast. During 700 years of Roman colonial rule the town and its industry prospered, and in 49 BC the municipality (one of 20 cities in Spain honoured at that time) was given the title Firmium Julium Sexi in recognition of the town's loyalty to Rome.
Major evidence of the fish salting and curing industry was uncovered during excavations in the 1970s and 1980s in the extensive Majuelo Botanical Gardens. These revealed the great extent of the rebuilding and modernising of the industry under Roman influence. A segment of the site has been carefully conserved, giving some idea of the size of the industry. This industry required not only large quantities of fish and sea salt, produced in many places along the coast, but also a constant supply of fresh running water.
To meet this demand the Romans built in the 1st century AD four miles of water conduit in the valleys of the Rio Seco and the Rio Verde, including five significant aqueducts. All, remarkably, are still standing and four of them are still in use after 2,000 years - adapted by the Moors over the centuries to serve the needs of crop irrigation. The Roman water supply also served the town and recent excavations in the town centre have uncovered the fifth aqueduct and the Roman baths.
The Romans were probably the first to fortify the Castle of Saint Miguel, although frequent rebuilding has obliterated most of the very extensive Roman fortifications. These included a bridge from the castle to the 'Peñon del Santo' with a massive 100 foot (30 m) high arch that survived until at least 1800.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almuñécar
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