Anyone who has spent a week on a sun lounger in Nerja has been looking at a two-thousand-metre mountain without knowing it. The ridge behind the town belongs to a natural park of 40,657 hectares shared by two provinces, and its summit is the highest ground in Malaga province.
How high is La Maroma and how long is the climb? The Junta de Andalucía publishes 2,065 metres on the park page and 2,068 on the sheet for the Alcázar trail, which also calls it the summit of Malaga province. All three waymarked paths are linear: five hours one way from Cortijo del Alcázar and four from Canillas de Aceituno or El Robledal, so a day means doubling that.
The Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara y Alhama Natural Park was declared on 21 September 1999 and is at once a Special Area of Conservation, a Special Protection Area for Birds and a Site of Community Importance, under code ES6170007. It covers 40,657 hectares across two provinces, with 8 Malagueño municipalities among them Nerja and Frigiliana.
The park that starts behind the beach towns
The Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara y Alhama Natural Park was declared on 21 September 1999 and is simultaneously a Special Area of Conservation, a Special Protection Area for Birds and a Site of Community Importance, under the code ES6170007.
On the Malaga side it takes in eight municipalities: Alcaucín, Canillas de Aceituno, Canillas de Albaida, Cómpeta, Frigiliana, Nerja, Salares and Sedella. Two of those names will be familiar to anyone who has read Frigiliana and Nerja in one day, which is the point: the protected area begins where the coastal day trip ends.
What the visitor gets besides the summit is more varied than the mountain suggests. The public-use inventory published for the park runs to four tiers:
- Fifteen waymarked trails, of which only three reach the summit, with names such as Pico del Cielo in Nerja and Puente Árabe in Salares.
- Five viewpoints and four picnic areas, plus one cycling track, spread across both provinces.
- Four controlled camping zones, two of them on the Malaga side at El Alcázar and Fábrica de la Luz.
- One botanical garden, Detunda-Cueva de Nerja, attached to the cave system covered in the Nerja caves.
Its single visitor centre sits inland at Sedella, on Calle Villa del Castillo, with a RENPA shop, an interactive model, a picture-window viewpoint and an audiovisual room. Its official sheet makes an accessibility claim worth quoting: “the entire exhibition space is adapted for people with motor and sensory difficulties”. Opening hours are not published here, because the tab holding them returns nothing readable.
Three waymarked ways to the top
| Trail | Starting point | One way | Time | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| El Robledal-La Maroma | El Robledal picnic area, Alhama de Granada | 8,900 m | 4 hours | High |
| Canillas de Aceituno-La Maroma | beside the town hall in Canillas | 9,004 m | 4 hours | High |
| Alcázar-La Maroma | Cortijo del Alcázar, Alcaucín | 10,523 m | 5 hours | High |
Two of the three start in Malaga province and one in Granada, which is the first sign that this mountain does not belong to a single administration.
The word that matters most in those sheets is linear. The distances above are one way only, so the shortest option is close to 18 kilometres on the ground and the longest passes 21, with the return by the same path.
All three carry the grade High, and the Junta explains why in plain language. The Canillas sheet describes “a steep climb” that makes it “a hard test in winter months”. The El Robledal sheet lists “rain, snow, ice, fog, cold” and warns of sudden changes in the weather.
Getting to any of the three trailheads means driving. Alcaucín is reached on the MA-4104 with roughly 6 kilometres more on the Alcázar track; Canillas de Aceituno on the MA-4106 off the A-356, which the sheet places “about 6 km north of Vélez Málaga”; El Robledal from kilometre 35.7 of the A-402 plus five kilometres of forest road. That puts this walk in the group of plans described in hiring a car in Malaga.
Where walking is not allowed
Water is where the provincial border stops being a line on a map. A resolution dated 29 June 2021, issued by the Territorial Delegation for Sustainable Development in Granada, bans “walking routes inside all natural watercourses, continuous or discontinuous” within the park, and it applies only to the stretches lying in Granada province.
The text names the Cebollón and adds the Cacín, Añales, Almijara and Verde. Two stretches are excepted: the Chortales ravine on the Verde, described as a stretch that can currently be authorised with prior permission and delimited in the text by UTM coordinates, and the Cacín below its meeting with the Cebollón. Routes that merely cross a watercourse on a track, or follow traditional paths, stay outside the ban, and no expiry date is attached to it.
The reasoning is stated openly. The resolution cites a “serious problem of overcrowding” on the Cebollón and the Verde, damage to the “riparian ecosystem”, and the presence of a river crayfish “in danger of extinction”.
The Malaga side has a comparable closure with a different author, because a town hall rather than the regional government signed it: the Chíllar river in Nerja, which is set out in full in Malaga’s natural pools. One park, two governments, two bans to check separately.
What the summit is made of, and how high it is
The colour of the high ground has a geological explanation. The Junta writes that “white and grey tones dominate the ridges and ravines, a consequence of the abundant marble in the area”, and lists two very different landmarks among the park’s geological features: the Maroma sinkhole, which gives the peak its name, and the Nerja cave, “declared a National Monument”.
Vegetation shifts with height, through “Aleppo, black and even laricio pines”, up to a yew grove the portal calls the southernmost on the Iberian Peninsula and places on the ascent to Salto del Caballo. The Spanish ibex, described as “an exclusively Iberian species”, is the animal most likely to be seen near the top, with golden and Bonelli’s eagles overhead. Walkers coming from the north find the park’s two information points at Alhama de Granada and La Resinera, while the Los Arrieros cycling track runs on that same side.
As for the altitude, the same portal gives two answers. The park’s page mentions the Tejeda peak at 2,065 metres; the Alcázar trail sheet says 2,068 metres and adds the ranking in one line: “the summit of the Sierra Tejeda, and of Malaga province too, at over two thousand metres”.
Neither figure is chosen here. Three metres change nothing about the walk, and both are published by the same government. For scale, the highest point of the national park covered in Sierra de las Nieves is Torrecilla at 1,919 metres, and the gentler walks in the province are compared in hiking near Malaga and in day trips from Malaga.
Frequently asked questions about La Maroma
How high is La Maroma?
The Junta de Andalucía publishes two figures on the same portal: 2,065 metres on the park’s own page and 2,068 metres on the sheet for the Alcázar trail. That second sheet also calls it the summit of the Sierra Tejeda and of Malaga province.
How long does it take to climb La Maroma?
Four to five hours one way, depending on the route, and all three waymarked paths are linear. The Junta gives five hours from Cortijo del Alcázar and four hours from Canillas de Aceituno or from El Robledal, so a full day means doubling those times.
Can you walk up the riverbeds in the Tejeda and Almijara park?
Not on the Granada side. A resolution dated 29 June 2021 bans walking inside all natural watercourses of the park within that province, naming the Cebollón, Cacín, Añales, Almijara and Verde, with two stretches excepted.
Which villages is the Sierra Tejeda park closest to?
On the Malaga side it covers Alcaucín, Canillas de Aceituno, Canillas de Albaida, Cómpeta, Frigiliana, Nerja, Salares and Sedella, which means the park begins directly behind two of the busiest towns on the eastern coast.
Two thousand metres of marble half an hour from the sand, and four hours of climbing for anyone who wants to stand on it.