Olvera is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful villages in Spain.
As always we were surprised by the enormous wealth of our villages. Olvera (Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain) is full of art and history, its streets are a permanent reminder of its Moorish past and it is a delight to stroll and lose oneself in its white corners covered with flowerpots and its steep, narrow streets.
In the distance the image of Olvera is haughty and impressive. Perched on a crag between the sierras of Grazalema and Ronda and dominated by the castle, at its feet the hamlet of Olvera stands tightly packed together. It is the outline of the frontier strongholds of the Nazari kingdom of Granada to which it belonged until the reconquest in the 14th century.
Olvera's history reflects the vicissitudes of the events that have marked the history of Spain. It may have been populated at a very early date, as the caves and vegetation of the mountain slopes offered an attractive refuge for prehistoric man, but it was in Roman times that we first heard of it. Conquered by the Arabs, taking advantage of the internal disorder caused by the succession crises of the Visigoth monarchy, it belonged to the cora of Saduna and was a stronghold dominated by a citadel on the border of the kingdom of Granada until its late reconquest in the 14th century. We hardly know anything about Olvera in the Modern Age, which indicates that after the conquest of Granada by the RRCC a period of decadence began that has lasted practically up to the present day. It formed part of the territory dominated by the French in the War of Independence, during which many works of art were plundered and some of its best civil and religious buildings destroyed. The crisis continued in the 19th and 20th centuries and many of its inhabitants had to emigrate to the north of Spain and to countries such as Holland, France, Switzerland and Germany.
Nowadays the village is recovering by taking advantage of the resources that its environment offers and the regeneration capacity of its inhabitants: the rural tourism favoured by the passing through its municipal district of the Vía Verde de la Sierra and above all the cooperative industries dedicated to the extraction of oil and sausages.
The castle is a Moorish fortress built at the end of the 12th century which curves around the rock, adapting itself to the terrain. The castle as we know it today has obvious Christian features in its construction, the result of successive remodelling that the castle had to undergo since it was taken by the Castilian troops, by Alfonso XI after a hard siege in the year 1327. After the negotiations that followed the surrender, Ibrahim-ibn-Utmán managed to ensure that the integrity of the Moorish garrison of Olvera was respected and that each of its inhabitants kept their homes and possessions.
From then until the fall of Zahara de la Sierra and Ronda, after the campaigns of 1482, it was the main Christian outpost on the border.
Of the castle, the entrance gate, through which one enters the enclosure, a stretch of the wall and the keep with two floors covered by a half-barrel vault connected by a steep spiral staircase carved into the living stone have been preserved. The view from it is impressive: a small cemetery, the white houses and in the background olive groves and mountains and we can see the landscape of three Andalusian provinces: Cadiz, Malaga and Seville, which shows its high strategic value in its time.
The church of La Encarnación is a neoclassical building from the 18th century, built on top of an older Mudejar Gothic building of which only the apse remains.
The present church has three naves with a barrel vault, and the Italian marble used in its renovation stands out. Its two twin towers on the façade also stand out.
