Gaucin canvas

Even today, the Andalucian hilltop village of Gaucin is a place for those in search of romantic thrills. In the past, those thrills had a very real element of danger. The village, clinging to a forested mountain ridge between Gibraltar and the remote inland town of Ronda, was a notorious lair for bandits and smugglers. Access was by a steep and narrow path, compared to a ladder by at least one traveller.

French writer Prosper Mrime braved the route in 1830 and was rewarded by views he believed only painters could properly convey. He was so excited by the whole experience that he later made Gaucin the native village of his most famous literary creation, Carmen.

Den and now

The road linking Gaucin with the coast is still gloriously vertiginous and the village itself — despite the replacement of bandits with foreigners — has not become an oppressive tourist den. It has also now acquired, in the shape of the Molino del Carmen, some of the most beautiful holiday homes in Andalucia. A former olive mill, some of its old machinery intact, the Molino extends down the side of the village that faces the distant Mediterranean. Divided into five holiday apartments, each with a panoramic terrace, this rambling white building is cheerful and decorated in a way that makes you feel welcomed into a tasteful and homely private domain.

You can also do as I did, and spend much of your time at the Molino staring at views that seem to have been conceived as illustrations of the picturesque and sublime.

A ruined Moorish castle, rising above sheer cliffs, guards a panorama that sweeps over a landscape of oaks, cork trees and craggy peaks to the faraway sea. Gibraltar is usually visible in the background, as are the Rif Mountains of Morocco. And after dark you can see the lights of the port of Tangier.

Understandably, and as Mrime predicted, Gaucin has become a haven for artists. The Molino's owner, a delightful young woman named Pip Jenkins, was keen to introduce me to some members of this diverse but close-knit community, whose influence seems to have ensured the village's well-kept look.

Going from one artist's dwelling and studio to the next helped me understand even better why the artistically inclined should want to settle in Gaucin. Even those with relatively modest means have been able to create for themselves miniature paradises, enhancing simple white interiors with a mass of eclectic objects, laying out patios and gardens, and ensuring that windows and terraces make the most of the village's endlessly astonishing vistas.

Refreshing and surprising

Colour, joy and whimsy were the inevitable characteristics of most of the art I saw at Gaucin, so it was refreshing that the work of the one major Spanish artist of the colony, the ceramicist Juan Antonio Sangil, should have a monumental and powerful austerity. Surprising, too, were the figurative works of the octogenarian American sculptor Bayard Osborn, whose art and life were a reminder of the darker elements to be found in any Eden.

The tall and handsome Osborn, one of the village's first foreign settlers, has lived here for more than a quarter of a century.

Now recovering from a stroke, he struggles to articulate tales of a life that appears to have embraced much of the 20th century. He was with the US troops who liberated the concentration camp at Maut-hausen and is also one of the last direct links to the New York avant garde of the 1950s and to the Bloomsbury Set, specifically Hispanicist Gerald Brenan, the first writer to promote an interest in Andalucia's traditions.

Taste of the countryside

During my time at Gaucin, I was able to enjoy an aspect of rural Andalucia barely appreciated by Brenan, and not at all by Mrime, whose idyllic impressions of the village were balanced by the experience of dining on tough, half-plucked chicken in a flea-ridden inn. Gaucin and its surroundings now have a gastronomy to match the beauty of the area. I was taken by the remote Caserio Ananda restaurant, which can be spotted from the spectacular British-built railway that connects Ronda with the coastal city of Algeciras. It serves a combination of imaginative tapas and the most delicious barbecued meats you'll find outside the Basque country.

I watched the opening of Gaucin's summer feria (to run from August 4-7) from the comfort of my terrace at the Molino. The village band marched by, followed by riders in sombreros and horse-driven carriages bearing this year's beauty queens.

I thought again about Mrime and how his sighting of one of these young women's predecessors had reputedly led to his invention of Carmen, the person who came to epitomise Spain's exoticism.

For a few moments the stereo-types of romantic Andalucia did not seem too far-fetched.