There are Spanish towns that are beautiful, and there is one that is beautiful in a different way. Salobreña, in the province of Granada, sits on a rocky headland where the Mediterranean and the Sierra Nevada almost touch. A white town, packed houses, a fortress on top - and a story bigger than the town.

The fortress dates from the 10th century, but its present form is the result of several centuries of remodelling. It sits 73 metres above the sea. It has four towers in the inner ring and two additional defensive belts built in the 15th century. "Torre Vieja" - 16 metres high, with a square base - was the palace's main hall. From the walls you can read how the last Nasrids (the dynasty that ruled before the Reconquista) lived in their final years before 1489.

What makes Salobreña special is that it was not only a residence, but also a favoured prison of the Nasrids. Their rival emirs and sultans were locked up there. One of them - Yusuf III - when his execution order came, asked to finish a chess game with the commander of the fortress. While he played, news arrived that the king had died and his brother crowned Yusuf himself as the heir to the throne. He saved his life by playing chess.

Muley Hacén, the second-to-last sultan of Granada and father of Boabdil, is said to have died gazing at the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, and asked to be buried there. Today the highest peak on the Iberian Peninsula bears his name.

In 1489, the Catholic Monarchs conquered it. In the late 18th century, marine erosion made it militarily useless and it was abandoned. In 1959, the municipality bought it for restoration - and since then, every intervention reveals something new. They recently uncovered a Nasrid mansion inside the palace with preserved floors and a Roman heating system. The sultans had a standard today's hotels struggle to match.

Below the fortress, a medina (old quarter) of streets that lead nowhere except where they need to. White houses under the Andalusian sun, small squares with fountains, windows looking out to the sea. La Bóveda, a medieval vaulted passage, connects two parts of the town. Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Rosario is a 16th-century church built on a former mosque. The viewpoint Mirador de Enrique Morente, dedicated to the great Granada cantor of flamenco, looks out over the Mediterranean.

Around the town, the "Ruta de la Chirimoya" passes through subtropical farmland where mango, avocado, cherimoya and guava grow. Proof that the past is also what you eat today. The old sugar factories from 1861 still stand - now classified as ethnographic heritage.

Charca and La Guardia beaches are for families. The rocky parts - for kayaking and snorkelling, with underwater meadows of posidonia. Washington Irving mentioned the fortress in his 1832 "Tales of the Alhambra," with the legend of the three princesses locked there by their father Muhammad IX, who watched the Christian knights pass with ships along the coast.

Not every village in Spain has so many layers. Salobreña has them, and doesn't try to explain them all at once. That's Spain on its best days - letting you discover for yourself what others would push at you.