Towering above the Almocábar gate, the monolithic church of the Holy Spirit is the Ciudad's unofficial cathedral, and certainly the place where the señoritos and their ladies from Ronda's old families can be seen at Sunday mass.
It was begun in 1485, the year of Ronda's Reconquest, by order of the Reyes Catolicos, and took twenty years to build. Its designers hedged their bets and built it as very much a fortification, foreseeing possible incursions in its future. Its interior is vast but largely featureless, apart from a baroque retable, screen, behind the altar, a baroque-style depiction of the Virgin and Holy Spirit, and one of Ronda's many spectacular funerary biers, which is paraded by dozens of bearers during the Semana Santa processions at Easter. Otherwise, the church is one great gothic lump, but it is interesting to penetrate the bell tower around the hour, when its one mighty bell lets out a suitably apocalyptic peal like the crack of doom.
GPS Location: 36º 44' 07"N 5º 09' 50"W View on Google Maps
