Ronda - Cultural Influence

Cultural Influence

American artists Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles spent many summers in Ronda as part-time residents of Ronda's old town quarter called La Ciudad. Both wrote about Ronda's beauty and famous bull-fighting traditions. Their collective accounts have contributed to Ronda's popularity over time.

In the first decades of the 20th century the famous German poet Rainer Maria Rilke spent extended periods in Ronda. There he kept a permanent room at the Hotel Reina Victoria (built in 1906) where his room remains to this day as he left it, a mini-museum of Rilkeana. According to the hotel's publicity, Rilke wrote (though probably not in Spanish) "He buscado por todas partes la ciudad soñada, y al fin la he encontrado en Ronda" and "No hay nada más inesperado en España que esta ciudad salvaje y montañera" ("I have sought everywhere the city of my dreams, and I have finally found it in Ronda" and "There is nothing that is more startling in Spain than this wild and mountainous city.")

Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls describes the execution of Nationalist sympathizers early in the Spanish Civil War. The Republicans murder the Nationalists by throwing them from cliffs in an Andalusian village, and Hemingway allegedly based the account on killings that took place in Ronda at the cliffs of El Tajo.

Orson Welles said he was inspired by his frequent trips to Spain and Ronda (e.g. his unfinished film about Don Quixote). After he died in 1985, his ashes were buried in a well located on the rural property of his friend, the retired bullfighter Antonio Ordoñez.

English writer George Eliot's book Daniel Deronda ("Daniel of Ronda") tells the story of a Spanish Jew brought up as an Englishman. There has been some speculation that Eliot's ancestors may have lived in Ronda prior to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

In the fashion world, Italian designer Giorgio Armani specially designed the bullfighting costume called ‘Goyesco’ for famed bullfighter Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez on the occasion of the ‘Corrida Goyesca’ that took place on September 6, 2009, in Ronda. Cayetano's suit of lights was in the Goyaesque style, comprising a jacket, trousers and cloak in techno-satin. The three pieces are embroidered with sequins, small glitter stones and thread, all matching the colour of the background fabric.