Pueblo Blanco – Vejer de la Frontera, Cádiz Province, Andalucía, Spain

Perched high on a hill and gleaming white under the intense Andalusian sun, you can see Vejer de la Frontera long before you make the journey up the winding road to enter the town proper. If the town makes an impression from afar, once you’re inside the narrow medina-like streets it becomes overwhelmingly atmospheric. The old part of Vejer is one of the most picturesque places I’ve visited. The winding lanes and alleyways, the whitewashed houses, ruined fort and ancient church are the stuff of historic novels, and Vejer has had an extraordinarily long history. Like nearby Cadiz, it was first a Phoenician town, then came the Carthaginians, followed by the Romans. The town was then ruled by the Visigoths until the arrival of the Moors.

In 712 the Battle of Guadalete took place to the north of Vejer. It was a defining moment in the Moorish conquest of Spain. The ruling Visigoth armies led by King Roderic, were defeated by an Arab and Berber army. Roderic was killed along with many Visigoth nobles, leaving a power vacuum that allowed the Moors to attack and capture the Visigoth capital of Toledo. Vejer would be ruled by the Moors for the next 536 years. It wasn’t until 1248 that the city fell to the Christian armies of Ferdinand III of Castile, after which it was a border town and fortress along the frontier with the parts of Spain that remained in Moorish hands. This is when it received the addition of ‘de la Frontera’ to its name. Even after the collapse of Moorish power, the town continued to be attacked by Barbary pirates – it’s close to the coast and was an easy target for Berber corsairs from the coast of North Africa.