Historic find in Valtocado

AN INVALUABLE piece of Mijas history has turned up after sitting in a shed for years.
Juan Gambero, from Valtocado, found a large slab of stone with inscriptions in Latin in the late 1980s while using rubble from a demolished house on Calle Malaga to fill in holes caused on his land by torrential rain.
Yet it was only recently, more than 25 years later, that his son stumbled upon the stone and urged his father to tell somebody about it.
“It was my son that said it could be of historical value and I should inform the council so it could be examined and kept for posterity, and he was right: it was more important than I could have imagined!” Gambero said.
Historical Heritage department technicians are busy studying the slab, which Gambero has donated to the village, and believe it could date back to the sixth or seventh century and may have been part of the village walls.
Fragments of inscriptions of a Latin hymn, Vexilla Regis, which was created by Christian poet Venantius Fortunatus and first sung in the year 569 can be seen carved into the stone.