Puente Nuevo

Stand still for a moment and listen. Far below your feet, water moves over rock. Swifts cut through the air in the gorge, and their thin, high cries come up from somewhere beneath you. The stone parapet under your hands is cool, rough and the colour of old honey. Lean out a little, if you dare, and the ground falls away almost vertically. You are standing on the Puente Nuevo, the New Bridge of Ronda, and there is very little between you and the river below.

The chasm under the bridge is called El Tajo. The Guadalevín River cut it into the rock over a very long span of time. The gorge splits Ronda in two. On one side is the old town, known as La Ciudad, with its narrow lanes and Moorish street plan. On the other side is El Mercadillo, the newer quarter that grew up after the Christian conquest in the late fifteenth century. For centuries, crossing between the two halves meant a long, steep detour.

Ronda already had older crossings further down the gorge. One is the Puente Viejo, the Old Bridge. Lower still is a small stone bridge often called the Arab Bridge or the Roman Bridge. Both sit close to the riverbed, where the gorge is narrower and shallower. But the town was growing, and the trade between the two halves needed something better. The town needed a crossing at the very top of the cliffs, where the gap is widest and deepest.

The first attempt did not go well. In the 1730s, builders put up a single, ambitious arch across the gorge. Within a few years it collapsed. Accounts say around fifty people died when it fell. It is a sobering thing to remember as you stand here. The bridge you are on now is the second try, and its builders clearly had that failure in mind. The new design is heavier, deeper and anchored far down in the gorge.

Work on the present bridge began in 1759 and took more than thirty years. It was finished in 1793. The design is usually credited to the architect José Martín de Aldehuela. He worked across southern Spain, and Ronda's bullring is also linked to his circle. Imagine the work here without modern machinery. Workers lowered themselves on ropes and built scaffolding against sheer rock. They hauled heavy stone blocks into place, one by one, high above the river.

Now look at how the bridge is put together. It does not leap across in one graceful span. Instead, it rises from the floor of the gorge like a wall. Massive piers climb from the riverbed, and above them sits a large central arch with smaller arches below. From the top of the gorge to the water is close to a hundred metres. Much of the stone is said to have come from the gorge itself, which is why the bridge matches the cliffs so closely.

Here is a detail many visitors walk straight past. Above the central arch, inside the body of the bridge, there is a room. For a long period it was used as a prison cell. Picture being locked inside, with the only view looking down into a gorge you could never cross. Today the room holds a small interpretation centre about the bridge and its construction. You enter from the side of the bridge, down a set of steps, and a separate ticket is needed.

That chamber also carries darker stories. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, Ronda saw violence on both sides. Locals say prisoners were thrown into the gorge from the cliffs here. Ernest Hemingway, the American writer, knew Ronda well. In his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, he describes villagers throwing their enemies from a cliff, and many readers connect the scene with Ronda. But that is fiction. Historians still debate exactly what happened here, so treat these accounts with care.

There is a lighter legend too, and it really is a legend. One popular tale says the architect fell to his death from the bridge. In some versions he was carving the date into the stone. In others, he leaned out to catch his hat in the wind. No reliable record supports either story. Still, guides in Ronda love to tell it. It says something about this place that people want even its creator to belong to the gorge.

Hemingway was not the only visitor drawn here. The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke spent a winter in Ronda just before the First World War. He wrote about the town perched on its two cliffs. The American film director Orson Welles also loved Ronda. After his death, his ashes were buried on a country estate near the town, owned by his friend, the bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez. Writers and artists came for the bullfights, but many stayed for the gorge.

If you want to see the bridge properly, you have to leave it. From the bridge itself you cannot see its shape at all. Walk a short distance along the cliff edge to the viewing points nearby. From there the whole height of the structure becomes clear, a stone wall filling the gorge from bottom to top. For the most dramatic view, follow the path that winds down below the old town. From the valley floor, the bridge rises straight above you.

Notice the buildings that sit right on the cliff edge on either side. Houses and terraces hang over the gorge, some with balconies that seem to float in the air. The large building beside the bridge on the Mercadillo side is now a Parador, one of Spain's state-run hotels. It stands on the site of the old town hall. A few minutes' walk away is Ronda's bullring, one of the oldest in Spain. Bullfighting traditions run deep in this town.

Before you move on, rest your hands on the parapet one more time. Feel the warmth the stone has taken from the sun. Look down at the river, thin and green between the rocks, and up at the swifts circling below your eye level. More than two hundred years ago, workers stood where you are now, finishing the last stones. As you walk away, look back once over your shoulder. The two halves of Ronda are still joined here.