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Cartama is situated at the foot of two small sierra mountains, Espartales 400m. and Llana 405 m., which together form the Sierra de Cartama. Its territory represents the frontier between the Guadalhorce valley region and La Hoya, in the Montes de Málaga, and favours the contrasting agricultural plain of orange trees and vegetables, on both sides of the Guadalhorce and the hills on the north of the municipality of Málaga.
Two landscapes to the west of the Guadalhorce river, in the bowl of the Grande river, its tributary, blend into terraced plots that grow orange and fruit trees from the irrigated land at the bottom of the valley to the top of the small hills. Cartama adds to the physiognomy of the Sierra de Gibralgalia. It is really a complex system of hills which the Cartama mountains extend to the heart of the Guadalhorce valley, in the municipal regions of Pizarra, Casarabonela and Coin.
If the land is varied, even more so the history of its inhabitants, as this area was occupied by Tartesides and Phoenicians and reached great its zenith with the Romans. It seems that the Phoenicians gave the town its first name, known in the primitive settlement as Cartha, meaning the hidden city. Later the Romans called it Cartima, converting it into a municipality in 195 B.C. and endowing it with substantial defences. During the Roman period, Cartama was one of the main towns in the present province of Málaga and its territory must have been highly populated, judging by the numerous sites and ruins that have been discovered. The Cartima baths were famous for their curative properties.
On the peak of the hill, on which the chapel of the Remedios was erected, there are still ruins of a castle, which the Arabs later rebuilt. This not only consolidated and extended the fort, but converted it into one of the main bastions of the Málaga's defense. In 1485 the castle of Cartama was taken by the Christian soldiers. This event was immortalized by the carvings in the bas-relief of the Choir in the Cathedral of Toledo.
Cartama is one of the most historic municipalities in the Guadalhorce region, and one of the largest, with its population spread over an area of 105 square kilometres in two towns, Cartama Pueblo and Cartama Estación. There are nine other smaller urban areas nearby. Its archaeolgical sites are among the best in the province, with fragments of ceramics, metals, walls, Roman coins and columns. Watching the different settlements over the centuries is the ancient castle fortress of Cartama. When the Phoenicians arrived, at what is now the town, they found a small fortress inhabited by the Iberians, situated on top of the Cerro de la Virgen hill.
Both Moors and Christians lived side by side for some time, establishing a factory in the La Vega and La Sierra area for the production of agricultural products of the region. For their mutual protection, they reconstructed the fortress and named this place Carth-Ma, meaning Hidden Town and Mother. It was seized by the Roman consul Marco Poncio Catón in 195 B.C., once installed in the town, Marco Poncio Catón rebuilt the castle and fortified it, extending the fortress towards the mountainside. The Visigoths carried out later reconstruction work on it, but it was during the Moorish occupation that it achieved the most importance.
The shifting Moorish military and political situation in the area was witness to a crucial economic and social change, and during the Nazari period the castle became vital for the social and political life of the entire region. The aspect that it would have had at that time would have been very similar to the castle in Álora, with very little decoration but strongly built. But the Christians did attack successfully in 1485. The defenders of the castle held out for quite some time but were forced to surrender in that same year and the Moorish period in Cartama came to an end. King Fernando and his officers, conscious of the stratigic military importance of the castle for the conquest of Ronda and Malaga, moved in and began further reconstruction work.
A meeting of the Council of Nobles was held in the building, and from there the conquest of Malaga was planned. After the fall of Granada the castle lay more or less abandoned until the War of Independence, when it was the scene of an attack against the French troops that had taken refuge there following the General Ballesteros siege. The castle today bares the scars of many military actions, fought over the centuries in Cartama. |
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