Andalusia, Spain’s most colorful province is located at the intersection between Europe and Africa where occident and orient meet. Its population is a merger of thousand year-old cultures. Andalusian people, not least due to the continuous influx of tourists from all over the world are on display and face challenges each day anew.
- The river Guadalquivir, called “big river” by the Arabs, is the geographical heart of this province with its incredibly diverse and wildly romantic landscape. It ranges from the gentle valleys of the Guadalquivir, to the lush green hilly landscapes of the interior, and the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
- This merging of the Mediterranean with the Atlantic makes the Andalusian Coast – with 800 km coastline the second longest in Spain after Galicia – especially attractive. The 25 Andalusian nature reserves have increased environmental awareness in the region; and most of the beaches are impeccably clean.
- Andalusia’s impressive historical heritage shows itself mostly in monuments such as the Alhambra of Granada, the Mezquita in Cordoba, or the Giralda in Seville; without any doubt some of the most important cultural monuments of humankind. The 800 years of Moorish occupation shaped the country just as the Christian Reconquista. It all came to an end in 1492 and with it the established political and geographical world order of that day when Columbus, departing from the Andalucian port Palos, went on his first discovery voyage.
- It was a few centuries later during the Romantic period and against the background of unrivaled architectural and cultural diversity that the glorious past was revived. Myths were born, such as those of Carmen and Don Juan, respectable Bandoleros, fearless bullfighters, and most of all the perception of an ever-present exotic oriental flair. In the future Andalusia will become a less rural and therefore a much more urbanized province.
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