Castillo de Colomares
A retired doctor and two bricklayers built the world’s largest Columbus monument by hand in seven years, with no blueprints. It ruined him.
Destination
Bioparc Fuengirola
Fuengirola’s old zoo was demolished in 1999 and rebuilt without cages — one of Europe’s first zoo-immersion parks.
Casares
The man who designed Andalusia’s flag and wrote its anthem was born in Casares in 1885 and killed in 1936.
Torre de Maro
Five 16th-century watchtowers stand along twelve kilometres of cliff. They fought nothing — they relayed smoke by day and fire by night.
Sierras of Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama Natural Park
The Sierra Tejeda is named after yew trees that have almost vanished. What remains is the southernmost yew stand in Iberia.
Balcón de Europa
Nerja’s famous viewpoint was a cannon battery, and the king credited with naming it probably didn’t. The archives say the name came first.
Caves of Nerja
Five boys chasing bats found the Caves of Nerja in 1959. The seal paintings inside may be the oldest art on earth — or may not be datable at all.
Museum Jorge Rando
Spain’s only Expressionist museum sits in a working-class Málaga barrio beside a 19th-century monastery — and charges nothing.
Montes de Málaga Natural Park
The pine forest above Málaga was planted in the 1930s to stop the floods that vineyard clearance had caused since 1544.
Carmen Thyssen Museum
One collector, one century, one region: the Carmen Thyssen shows how 19th-century painters manufactured the visual idea of Andalusia.