Wandergliding: Antequera's Castle & the Rocks of El Torcal

January 22^nd, 2026

Since I parked Octi last night with a fantastic view of the Alcazaba of Antequera, a Moorish fortress near the edge of the small city of Antequera, I had to go check it out this morning.

Walking the narrow streets of Antequera to reach the castle.

Looking over the city from just outside of the castle.

Checking out the view.

The main outside gate of the fortress, known as the "Arco de los Gigantes" - the Arc of the Giants. A good name! It's 7 meters tall and 2 meters thick.

The castle was erected over Roman ruins in the 14th century to counter the Christian advance from the north. It was of great strategic and military importance for when the Islamic world began to come under pressure from Christian Spain, from the north.

One of the corner towers on the south side of the fortress.

The opposing corner tower with a bell tower.

Got to love a crenulated wall!

Looking south from the wall. Octi is in the middle of the photo, just where the buildings end. That's where I slept last night.

A 360 view from the wall.

The bell tower.

The remaining bits of an old mechanical clock.

I seemed to be the only tourist in the place, at least for the first half of my visit. Eventually I saw all of three other visitors. I listened to part of an audio guide on my phone, but it wasn’t terribly interesting.

This was the room with the nicest view. You can just make out a mountain with a slanted slope in the distance.

The remaining ruins of a mosque.

I thought this was cool...it's a "selfie stand".

So I had to try it out (this was take #4).

Some remaining walls and a gate outside of the bit that you have to pay to enter.

My visit only lasted about 45 minutes, which was okay as I still had a big day ahead of me and it was already past 11 am. I drove about 25 minutes to the south of Antequera to visit “El Torcal de Antequera”, a nature reserve with some funky rock formations.

On the drive up the mountain.

Okay, that's different.

The view from the top. You can briefly see the Mediterranean in the distance.

It was a bit foggy when I first arrived at the visitor centre near the top as clouds rolled over the mountain. There was a 45 minute and a 2-hour trail that you could hike which I opted not to do as I still planned on driving almost a couple of hours to reach Cordoba and also check it out…it was a big day…big enough that I’ll post Cordoba in a separate blog post.