Areas around Sotogrande
Torreguadiaro
The village next door to the marina, separated from it by a long stretch of sand and a lagoon full of migrating birds. Around a thousand people, one main street, a Blue Flag beach and more restaurants than the size of the place has any right to support. This is where Sotogrande goes out to eat when it wants a change of scenery.
Guadiaro
The old village up the river valley, bypassed by the coast road in 1969 and quietly getting on with things ever since. There is little to do here in the busy sense, which is exactly why people from Sotogrande drive up: a handful of unpretentious bars and restaurants priced for locals, orange groves on the floodplain, and the old iron bridge on the way to San Enrique.
Pueblo Nuevo de Guadiaro
The village that supplies everything the coast needs and gets none of the photographs. It exists because the 1969 road left a slice of farmland stranded on the wrong side of it, and it now holds the supermarkets, banks, builders merchants, vets and lawyers that keep the area running. Ordinary, busy and genuinely useful.
San Enrique de Guadiaro
A small citrus village across the old iron bridge, small enough that you could miss it entirely by blinking at the wrong moment. There is a plaza of sorts, though only in the sense that the houses happen to leave a gap beside the main road. What it does have, disproportionately, is restaurants, running from Spanish tapas to Argentine steaks. The Ayala polo grounds sit on the edge of it and fill the calendar through the summer, and the road north climbs into the cork oak country of Los Alcornocales.
San Roque
The municipal town on a hill fifteen minutes inland, with a compact old quarter of whitewashed streets that keep opening onto views of Gibraltar and Africa. On its doorstep are the Pinar del Rey pinewoods, four marked forest trails and the Roman port of Carteia, which sits improbably behind an oil refinery. A half day of proper Andalusia between the golf and the beach.
Castellar de la Frontera
A thirteenth century fortress with an entire village living inside the walls, twenty minutes uphill through cork oak forest. The residents were rehoused in a purpose-built new town in 1971, the old village was promptly reoccupied by German hippies, and the craft and music shops in the lanes are what became of them. The view takes in Gibraltar and Morocco.