Las Alpujarras

From Sevilla we jump on a train to Granada, sleep a night, pick up a car and drive straight out of town. The Alhambra will have to wait for a few days, as we make our way up the Sierra Nevada, the home of one of my family names, Serrano (literally meaning ‘from the mountains’).

It’s got to be one of the most impressive landscapes in the world: curvy climbs passing tiny towns that seem to grow from the sides of the mountains, built from mud bricks and whitewashed. It’s hard to know where one house starts and the other ends, and all roads have a gutter in the middle to channel the runoff from the melting snow of the peaks. All these places have a network of fountains that originate in natural springs somewhere up in the hills.

This is the Poqueira Gorge, a valley at one point populated by moors and now sparsely inhabited villages that fill up during summer by locals who left to work in the cities and during winter by skiers. As pretty much whole towns are on slopes, it’s pretty hard not to come by a room with a view. After lunch in the ultra-touristed Campaneira, where every house seems to have been replaced with a souvenir shop, we head up the hills to the quiet Bubión, which has an amazing view of the Valley all the way to the sea, and on a clear day, North Africa...

It would appear walking has been the mode of transport people have used here for centuries, as not only is there a network of drinking fountains, but also a network of walking paths, used to connect mainly abandoned cortijos, or shepherd’s huts built from stone, tucked into the slopes on terraces. We did the two-and-a-half hour trek from Bubion to Capilera among the ruins of rural life in the Sierra Nevada.

What we ate: Arroz cateto, or the mountain version of paella, with rabbit, chicken, green peppers and artichokes; choto, or goat kid (no older than 4 months) cooked in a peppery, herby gravy with patatas a lo pobre, poor man’s potatoes, steamed then in olive oil with onion, herbs and green peppers. Herb of preference: tomillo (we think that means thyme). What we drank: organic Crianza from Cadir, just down from the hills, and Alahmbra 1925 beer, brewed in Granada. All on the terrace of the tavern, only a few steps away from the bar filled with locals watching a Real Madrid v Sevilla match. Un partidazo (a superlative match): one all until Sevilla scored for a win in the 80th minute.