If you are a fan of Game of Thrones then you’ll know Almodovar Del Rio. You’ll know the castle here that dominates the skyline for tens of miles around. It is something quite spectacular and seeing it every day never fails to bring about a sense of wonder and awe.

But is Almodovar, our home during the working week, more than just its castle?

Well, yes and no.

I’m about to give you a brief introduction to its history but its history always involves the use of the castle by various factions, religions, kings, caliphs, dictators, revolutionaries and TV crews. It is inevitable.

The castle sits upon a rather splendidly geographical hill called El Redondo / La Floresta depending upon who is giving the talk

So, let’s start at the beginning…

The area was inhabited long before the medieval town existed. Local historical accounts point to prehistoric remains in the municipality, including Lower Palaeolithic finds and later evidence from the Copper Age and Iberian periods around the castle hill and nearby river confluences.

In antiquity, the site is often associated with Cárbula, a fortified settlement mentioned by Roman writers, though the strongest visible monument today belongs to the medieval period. The hill’s value was obvious: it overlooked the Guadalquivir corridor, one of the great routes through southern Spain, indeed one of the greatest rivers in Europe if you ask my humble opinion.

The Guadalquivir links this area known as the Frying Pan (because of the unbearable heat of the summer) with the Atlantic city of Cadiz which was one of the most prized by any would-be conqueror of Europe. It was strategic and had great fish meals. Who wouldn’t want it if you were serious about being a small-statured despot?

Anyway…

The castle is the defining historical landmark. The official tourism site says the oldest preserved document refers to a castle there as early as 741, during the early Muslim conquest period making it one of the great Islamic-period fortifications of Córdoba province.

During al-Andalus, Almodóvar’s fortress was tied to changing Muslim powers. Its Arabic-derived name is often linked to the idea of a “round” place or fortress, fitting the hill’s shape.

In 1240, the castle was conquered by the Christian forces of Ferdinand III “the Saint” – a rather ironic label given that he was an absolute bastard. After that, it became part of the Christian frontier and royal defensive network.

The castle also played a role in 14th-century Castilian politics. Its current historical reenactments, which get a lot of tourists and money, focus on the struggles between Pedro I and Enrique II around 1350–1360, showing how the fortress was connected to wider royal conflict.

By the modern period, the fortress declined. Its major revival came between 1901 and 1936. That restoration largely explains why the castle looks so complete and dramatic today. That and money from the Game of Thrones production team.

You see the word “Carbula” around here a lot. It was the name of the town before the Romans arrived; probably a Turditanian town whose people were descended from the Carthaginians who themselves were descended from Phoenicians.

Yes, the whole point is to say that heritage is not as black and white as some people would have you believe.

Carbula was then considered an offshoot of Cordoba which became, in time, one of the largest cities in Europe and the very centre of a Roman nation and then an Islamic one. It had huge importance. It was massively influential. It was at the centre of empires.

And like all Andalucian towns and cities, it’s influence waned. Madrid became King. Barcelona became the Prince; Valencia the princess.

During the Spanish Civil War, which you are not supposed to talk about, the town briefly rebelled against the Fascists of Franco in 1936 but the rebellion by the local farming community and “Lefties” was quickly and violently quashed.

Today there are the memories of those that died during the month long conflict buried within the local cemetary but, again, speaking about them is frowned upon.

The current residents of the town are still predominantly “Lefties” who have voted in a particularly Andalucian local party to govern the population of around 8000 people. There is little evidence of popular support for the bastard Vox, which says a lot about the place.

Agriculture and tourism are the main employers of the town with a small percentage, including us, commuting for 30 minutes to Cordoba each day. The town has an unemployment rate of 16% which is high but not as high as many other places.

Almodovar is considered to be fairly low on the wealth indices of Spain, 359th in Andalucia and 2500th nationally with an average disposal income of around sixteen thousand euros. We do feel very much part of the town in financial terms.

Will Almodovar Del Rio suffer from what is commonly known as “Empty Spain”? Probably not. The castle and the beaches at the huge reservoirs just outside the town mean that there will always be visitors who need to be guided, boarded and fed and watered.

Will its agriculture be taken over by AI and its machines? Possibly, but there is a feeling that it will take a long time for it to have any great effect.

For now its population is stable but unlikely to grow unless it can attract people from Cordoba to live here and for that it needs the railway to be re-linked and for the roads that connect the two places to become dual carriageways which has been the pre-occupation of many recent city administrations.

For some reason the insular wankers that run Cordoba seem disinterested in extending transport links to a satellite town that is “lefty”.

That Cordoba chooses to ignore the town may also be down to snobbery given that Almodovar is, without any doubt at all, one of the chaviest places in Spain. It is Chav-central. It is Chavtastic.

As you know, chavs are a subset of any culture but this place has elevated them to the prime beasts of the locality. It is quite normal to go into any local supermarket in the early evening to find shoppers still in their pyjamas and dressing gowns and slippers. No one bats an eyelid.

Young men driving their GTI cars stupidly around town is perfectly normal at any time of day.

Groups of chavs in their colourful polyester shell suits complete with backwards-facing baseball caps are everywhere each evening especially when they are comparing the loudness of their exhaust pipes on their GTI cars.

Chav girls wear the most skin-tight imaginable clothing at any hour of the day as they zoom around on their electric scooters making male chav onlookers hoot with pleasure or derision as they decide whether the female in question is hot or not.

Young families and their kids habitually hang around cheap cafes and restaurants spilling into the roads to cause traffic to stop and talk to them. This is just how things are done here.

Older chavs drive at moronic speeds in the extremely narrow streets whilst, and this is important, also smoking a fag. There are more tabacs per square metre than most other Spanish towns. And if there is no fag in hand, there is always a mobile phone to be used whilst tearing around the hilly roads.

It is the way that it is here. The smell of marijuana is a constant when you go strolling the streets. It is Chavtown and it is accepted without question. What to do?

And if that seems like a pompous piece of snobbery, it really isn’t because amongst all that is the undeniable fact that this town is actually a very friendly place.

We have, wherever we have gone here, encountered genuine friendliness. People seem happy that we, as foreigners, have chosen to be here. Whenever I take Luna out and she is the inevitable pain in the arse that she is, people still smile and laugh and nod in appreciation of having an Andalusian dog to cut into the peace.

We don’t know many people around here but we are recognised. The gym that we go to know us as the foreigners and have never been anything except welcoming even as they fail to comunicate with us given our shit Spanish.

It is easy to mock Almodovar Del Rio as a hick town but that’s too simplistic as a label.

It has character. Unlike Colmenar Viejo or Tres Cantos on the outskirts of Madrid, this place is interesting. Each time that you come home, from any direction, to see the castle is to see something quite remarkable.

To take the dogs for any walk you will need to go to the railways tracks that bluntly barrage their way through the edge of town but are also alongside the incredibly powerful Guadalquivir river that has, for thousands of years, provided the means for this town to survive and prosper.

This place is steeped, quite literally, in history. It is perched partly on the round hill of the castle with some of the hilliest (and narrow) streets in Andalusia. It is, apart from the castle, a bit rubbish at fully exploiting its history – the Roman portage ruins by the river are an absolute disgrace – but that seems to be normal for many places outside of Granada and Cordoba.

Almodovar does have a profusion of sports clubs, a decent enough football team, several large gyms, a strong boxing scene and padel courts and jogging routes that are always busy. Why this is is because, although chavvy, the locals need something to do and there isn’t much in the way of entertainment around the town.

These clubs and actvities give the people a better sense of belonging than other towns that we have lived in here in Spain. It is noticeable and all the better for it.

To sum up, if one can about whole town of 8000 people, Almodovar is a place that is lived in; it is the “place where the castle is” according to most Cordobans; it has rough edges but also has warmth in its people; it is proudly lefty politically and is somewhere that does not hide its dependence on polyester clothing.

It’s where we live for most of the year at the moment. It’s okay.