Chauchina is located in the Fertile plain of Granada, between choperas and very careful cultivated fields, in the shore of the Genil river. This natural location, in the forest of the shore, offers excellent conditions to practice trekking in the outskirts of Chauchina and its attached villages: Romilla and Romilla La Nueva. It has an agrarian landscape, plagued of tobacco dryer warehouses, some still in use, that have been the most outstanding constructive elements of the area next to the cortijadas and old farmhouses. It is also important is geometric disposition, fruit of the successive divisions of the land.
In the XIV century, Ibn al-Jatib, from Loja, already mentions the place, transcribed like Yayyana. There are more documents about a fortress of this district, the Tower of Rome, in which the population had to take refuge at the violent final moments of the Medieval period.
In the middle of the Fertile plain of the Genil, the link of Chauchina with its ferocious surroundings is so big that there are people who maintain that its denomination derives from the Latin word sancius, the corruption of salix, willow, because of its abundant presence in the natural vegetation of the shore. In any case, it has been demonstrated the remote human presence in the area thanks to the finding of diverse rests - ceramics, equipment, coins whose chronology goes from the Neolithic period to the Iberian time.
The settlement was consolidated, nevertheless, in the Muslim period. The legendary Tower of Rome, that lent its name to the Soto de Roma - orchard that, in words of Washington Irving, "was a retirement founded by the count Julian for consolation of its Florinda daughter" -, carried out diverse feats of arms. The Muslims occupied the area between the years 711 and 713 and dried great part of the humid areas next to the river. Chauchina was one of the many farmhouses, with between 500 and 1,000 inhabitants, of the Fertile plain of Granada.
After the Reconquest and the later expulsion of the Moorish the town was almost depopulated. In the XVIII century new neighbours arrived at the settlement to cultivate the linen and the hemp. After the war of Independence it became part of the jurisdiction of the Duke of Wellington. The present centre of its urban core was started to be built in the middle of the XIX century already, although it grew quickly thanks to the cultivation of the sugar beet.
The calamari of fertile valley or dry land (fried onion rings); the haunches of frog, the fried cod and the asparagus omelette stand out. About the homemade desserts those of the Virgen del Pincho made by the nuns stand out.
© Patronato Provincial de Turismo de Granada I Diputación de Granada
