Giants and Titans. Almeria, Málaga, Seville

There is a whole tradition in Andalusia based on the mythology of the Atlantes and the Titans, who inhabited and shaped this land in times long past.

Three provinces stand out in particular (Almería, Málaga and Seville) for the most outstanding traces of their spectacular labours, the megalithic formations. Right on the edge of eastern Andalusia, near Cabo de Gata, a spur of volcanic outcrops over the sea, there appear hermetic vestiges of the first settlements that worked metal.

This past is echoed in the gold mines of Rodalquilar. Also, the fortresses and the megalithic necropolis of Los Millares are silent witnesses of these groups, which might have been related to the cyclopean cultures of the eastern Mediterranean.

In the province of Seville, at Valencina, the dolmens of Matarrubilla and La Pastora, as well as those westwards at Mesas de Gandul, extend the megalithic tradition to the interior.

In Málaga, Antequera has the most famous dolmens of global megalithic culture: Menga and Viera. Temples or sepulchres, perhaps both, these dolmens belong to a conception of the world that gives tremendous importance to the powers of the earth.

The very elements that make up the Menga dolmen suggest the intervention of superhuman forces in its building, in view of the non-existence - at that time - of mechanical means capable of transporting stones of such a large size. This area, under the magic influence of La Peña de los Enamorados, seems to form part of a culture that worshipped the expression of some telluric forces to which they ascribed divine powers.

Some historians associate this culture with the Agar culture of eastern Andalusia. At Benaoján there are two more dolmens with explicit names: Giant and Giantess, the only beings - according to legend -capable of moving these carved rocks.

In Antequera, there is also a Giants´ Gateway. Back at Benaoján, there is La Pileta cave, supposedly sacred, whose walls are covered in magnificent paintings of animals and symbols, unknown in the present day.

Legends of giants and lifted rocks and opened gorges and gullies are plentiful all over this region, as much to explain the existence of dolmens, as to find a reason for some of the surprising landscapes, which seem they might have been made by man.

One of these is the mysterious Torcal, 16 kms. outside of Antequera. This is an enormous formation of rocks, where the erosion of a thousand years has made them look like the towers of a bewitched city.

There are some points in El Torcal where the visitor´s steps seem to echo in underground cavities, and others where his breath remains suspended in a motionless vibration of the air.

The gorge of El Chorro and El Tajo of Ronda also belong to this category of phenomena of nature to which popular superstition has ascribed a premeditated origin, result of a superhuman effort in remote times rather than the slow and indifferent task of eruption and erosion. In both of these sites, the existence of sacred places of different eras - the cave hermitage of Bobastro at El Chorro and the ruins of Acinipo in Ronda - confirms that their magic attributes where perceived long ago and used for religious purposes.

Science has not been able to discover the origin of the magic properties of these places of abrupt contrast and enormous tectonic turbulence (faults, abysses, caves, ravines, volcanoes and deserts). However, progress in metering systems of the different types of radiation from the earth and its proven connection with apparently inexplicable events, lead us to think that some day this type of phenomena will leave the field of magic, in order to enter the field of science.