Ayuntamiento de Mollina
Calle de La Villa, 3
29532 Mollina, Màlaga
Telephone: 952-740-044 http://www.mollina.org/
About The Area
There has been a human settlement on the site of this small town
(current population just over 4,800) since Neolithic times. Just
15km north-west of Antequera on the A92, on the lower slopes of
the Sierra de Mollina, this is set in perfect olive and cereal
country. It is also a mere ten km from the Laguna de Fuente de
la Piedra lake, famous for its pink flamingos.
The name derives in fact from a milling tower,
the Torre Mollina (similar to the Costa's Torremolinos), which
vanished some time in the Middle Ages. An alternative theory claims
the name originates with its Roman rulers and derives from the
Latin 'mollis', suave, or bland.
Little remains of either Neolithic or Roman
Mollina, beyond some Neolithic artefacts found in the neighbouring
Sierra de la Camorra, and, seven km from Mollina itself, the rectangular
shaped Roman mausoleum of La Capuchina.
Four km outside town there
are the ruins of the fort of Castellum of Santillán, originally
a settlement built around a Roman villa and surrounding outbuildings
covering an area of 1400 square metres. The Castellum was later reinforced with defensive walls, a sign of the upheavals in this
part of Andalucía in Roman times.
The present town, however, dates mainly from
a more peaceful time, the 16th century, when the Reconquest was
won and the lands parcelled out for farming to the victors. Thus
the peacetime Mollina grew up around a convent, the Convent de
la Ascension, rather than a fortified encampment like many Andalucían
towns. (Don't miss the handsome sundial on the covent façade.)
At its agricultural peak, Mollina's olive groves were so productive
that the parish church of San Cayetano, built in 1687, was changed
to Nuestra Señora de la Oliva.
Mollina won independence from nearby Antequera
at the beginning of the 19th century, although at that time Andalucía's
agriculture was in decline. Since the 1960s, the population has
dwindled as the young head to the coast to work. Yet Mollina still
produces a surprising 80 per cent of the wine made in the province
of Málaga.
The main hotel (there are only two), the hotel
Molino del Saydo, a few kilometres south, is an example of a typical
Spanish roadside hotel that has suffered from the loss of passing
traffic, following the construction of the A92 Seville-Granada
motorway in the early 1990s.
Mollina has four major annual festivals. The
Candelaria, or candle-lit procession, is celebrated on the first
day of February, and in May there is a Romería, or procession
into the country, in honour of the Virgen de la Oliva. The town's
summer feria is early, in the second week of August, but that
is perhaps to make way for possibly the most important festival,
the wine harvest festival, or Feria de la Vendimia, in the second
week of September.
