The territory of the municipality of Benarrabá, watered by the Rivers Genal and Guadiaro, presents to the visitor a landscape forested with cork oaks, evergreen oaks and pines on the one hand and on the other olive groves and grain fields, crops that give away along the riverbanks to citrus trees, vegetables and orchards. These lands as a whole possess the diversity that is characteristic of a varied mountain terrain rich in contrasts. It is in the watershed of the River Genal, though, that the landscape reaches levels of outstanding beauty.

The urban district faces the valley of the River Genal. It sits on a knoll on which has been laid out a fascinating maze of streets and alleys in whose background, bends in the street permitting, can be seen the verdant nearby forest.

There is no reliable evidence of human settlement in these lands before the arrival of the Arabs to the Iberian Peninsular, so every indication is that the place was founded during the Muslim era, apparently by descendants of the Bann Rabbah (Sons of Rabbah) tribe of the Berbers, thus the name of the town.

These first settlers constructed a fortification on the slopes of Mount Porón that dominated a landscape that included the neighbouring towns of Jubrique, Gaucín, Algatocín and Genalguacil. This was responsible for the fortress becoming the best point for observing and defending a large part of the valley. There are those who say, perhaps letting their imaginations run wild, that that castle had an underground connection with those of Casares and Gaucín. After the Christian Conquest, these lands passed directly into the hands of the House of Medina Sidonia.

One of the most important and best-documented historic occurrences in this place is in fact connected to the House of Medina Sidonia. In 1636, the ninth duke of that illustrious name passed through Benarrabá on the way to Montilla where he was going to pick up his wife, Juana Fernández de Córdoba, whom he had married by proxy. The retinue passed through the place with such pomp and ostentation that it went down in local history as a notable event.

Monuments

How to Get There

If the traveller is in Ronda or its environs, the easiest way to get to this town is to take the A-369 (Ronda-Algeciras road), and once past Algatocín to take the MA-538 to Benarrabá. If he is starting from the Costa del Sol, it is advisable to go by way of the AP-7 (N-340) to Manilva and there to take the A-377 to Gaucín, where it connects with the A-369 and Benarrabá is then reached by the aforementioned MA-358.