Ronda and Setenil in a Day: Is this Road Trip from Málaga Worth It? 

In southern Andalusia you can enjoy a day trip of windy roads lined with endless olive groves, a bridge soaring over a nearly 400-foot gorge, and a town built under natural rock shelves that loom over it like frozen waves of stone. 

But if you are considering the journey from Málaga to Ronda and Setenil de las Bodegas, you’ll have to spend some of the time you’ve budgeted for Spain’s Costa del Sol to a looooonnnggg day of travel – whether you sign up for a tour bus or drive it yourself. 

Is it worth it? For my money, the answer is a definite yes. The cliffside city of Ronda and the cavelike town of Setenil deliver plenty of visual novelty, stunning and scenic landscapes, and a strong mix of cultural, historical and natural attractions. You can choose to do it all in a single day, or spend the night in Ronda and spread the experience across two days.

We did it in one day from Pedregalejo, a small fishing village east of Málaga. We made the trip in a Cupra we had rented in Granada. After driving the twisting, cliff-hugging “Goat Road” to the coast the previous day, I was beginning to feel a bit like James Bond—albeit without the Aston Martin. 

Travelers who would rather avoid driving, parking and route-finding can also book full-day bus tours from Málaga. 

Both Kris and I love to drive, and wanted to be on our own clock, so we opted for our own vehicle. For us, the trip from Pedgregalejo to Ronda took nearly two hours, which included a snack stop. It would be a bit shorter if you are coming from Málaga. If you’ve been spending all your time along the seacoast, the drive will give you a sense of what interior Andalucia is like – dry and rocky, taupe hills, and scores of olive trees extending in every direction. 

Start Early – and Have a Parking Plan

For Ronda during the high season (we went there in late May), you simply MUST have a strategy to beat the crowds, which are at a fever pitch in the middle of the day. First word of advice: Leave EARLY from Málaga. We were underway before 9 a.m., a stitch later than I would have liked. When we reached Ronda, the first order of business was to secure parking within reasonable walking distance of the initial gorge “reveal” at the Alameda del Tajo, the plaza that overhangs Ronda’s gorge viewpoints. We snagged a spot in an enclosed garage, Parking la Merced, and I got the sense were were getting one of the last that were available.

Ronda is more than just the Puente Nuevo, known as “the bridge.” Don’t miss the overhanging viewpoints at the end of the Alameda del Tajo. You will walk through beautiful tree-lined gardens, and then, BOOM, the cliffs suddenly explode into view. There are several balconies hanging over the gorge, with a huge drop to the valley floor below and the Serrania de Ronda mountains in the distance. It’s a great place for photos, and since the tourist throng will be with you, that means “Selfieville.” You will likely have to take your turn before stepping up to a balcony rail to snap a picture of the dramatic, sweeping view below. 

Next to the Alameda del Tajo gardens, along the Paso de Blas Infante, memorials honor two Americans captivated by Ronda. Orson Welles loved the town so much that his ashes were interred on a nearby estate. Ernest Hemingway visited several times and celebrated Ronda’s romantic promenades, food, wine and scenery. 

Ronda’s beauty also carries a grim legacy. During the opening months of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, an estimated 30 to 50 Nationalist sympathizers and prisoners were killed near the gorge, some reportedly thrown into the ravine. Accounts differ about precisely what occurred. Hemingway, who was almost certainly not present, fictionalized a similar execution in For Whom the Bell Tolls, using it to depict a war in which neighbors turned violently against neighbors.

The Best View of the Puente Nuevo is From Below

Moving on from the Paso de Blas Infante, we walked to the bridge  shoulder-to-shoulder with a teeming crowd of tourists. The view from the Puente Nuevo is stunning, and gives you a vantage point of the Ronda cliffs in multiple directions, but it fails to convey what I believe is the most compelling view in the city – the scene from below the bridge. 

To get that, you have to do the one thing that many tourists miss: the hike down to the Mirador del Puente Nuevo, which serves up the legendary photo angle from beneath the bridge. From that angle, you also have a better appreciation for the waterfalls of the Guadalevín River running through the gorge. 

The descent is steep. At the Mirador entrance, we paid €5 each and were issued helmets and hairnets for the final section toward the waterfalls. Rather than retracing the steep trail, we followed a gentler—but exposed—southern path toward Ronda’s medieval walls. 

Instead of climbing back out of the gorge via the same steep pathway we used to get down into it, we walked along a gentler, albeit sun-exposed pathway south which ended back just outside the southern end of the extensive medieval fortifications built during the Islamic era to complement Ronda’s natural gorge defenses.

Finding the Quieter Side of Ronda

To our delight, we were far from the tourist hordes clogging the Puente Nuevo and gift shops lining Ronda’s Plaza España. We found a charming cafe just outside the city walls and enjoyed tapas at an outside table under the shade of a large oak tree. 

After lunch, we passed through a stone gate and discovered an entirely new viewpoint, now on the east side of Ronda, at the “Murallas del Carmen.” We climbed up a tower with a sweeping vista of the rural lands surrounding the city. We saw only one other couple while walking the walls. 

It was time for us to head back to our car for the trip to Setenil. On the walk back, we passed Plaza Duquesa de Parcent, Santa María la Mayor and Ronda’s historic bullring, often described as a birthplace of modern bullfighting. 

How Much Time Do You Need in Setenil?

The striking Ronda has many attractions and is worth dedicating a half day or more. Setenil, can be enjoyed in about an hour or so … Its anchor value involves two streets tucked underneath massive, overhanging, natural stone bluffs. 

The first, the Cuevas de la sombra (“Caves of the Shadow”), features a street where the homes, cafes, and shops lie under a stone roof, dramatically showcasing Setenil’s unique and adaptation to its natural surroundings. From a window in one of the buildings a resident can reach out and touch the wall. Sparrows have built mud nests along fissures in the rock, and they sing and flit about your head as you pass under this strange stone canopy. 

Calle Cuevas del Sol is brighter and more open, but its taverns and shops are also built directly into the rock. We explored several stone-ceilinged interiors, stopped for sangria and browsed the small shops. 

We highly recommend parking in the garage near the bottom of the canyon that winds through Setenil instead of along the road above the town. If you choose the latter, you might have to walk a long way to get to the two centerpiece streets, as well as face an uphill hike back to your car. 

As our final act during this worthwhile day trip from Málaga, we walked to the top of the Escaleras al Mirador del Carmen, providing us with the classic panoramic view over the white houses and rock formations of Setenil. 

The drive back to Pedregalejo took about 90 minutes. It had been a long day—crowded, steep and sunbaked in places—but we were home in time to make dinner. More importantly, the answer to the question we had started with was clear: Ronda and Setenil were worth the miles.