Pedro Abad

Exit 368: the village you reach by accident

Most British travellers meet Pedro Abad at 120 km/h. The A-4 slices past its southern edge, close enough that lorry drivers use the church tower as a landmark for the final bend before Córdoba. Take the slip road, however, and the motorway roar drops to a low hum. Suddenly the day is measured by the height of the sun over the Guadalquivir valley, not by the dashboard clock.

The place is laid out like a grid drawn with a ruler: straight streets of whitewashed houses, iron grilles, pots of geraniums that residents move into shade when July turns vicious. At 162 m above sea level the heat is still Andalusian, but the river two kilometres away softens the nights. Olive groves press against the town limits on every side, their silver-green rows rolling north until the land buckles into the Sierra Morena.

A town born from an abbot’s land register

Pedro Abad owes its name and existence to Pedro Fernández de Córdoba, an eighteenth-century abbot who carved a new settlement from the ruins of Roman Torreparedones. The plan was Enlightenment-neat: streets wide enough for a cart to turn, central church, fertile flood-plain for grain and olives. Two and a half centuries later the economy is unchanged: the cooperative on Calle Pablo Iglesias processes three million kilos of olives each winter, and the air between November and February smells faintly of cut grass and fresh oil.

The Iglesia de San Pedro Apóstol sits exactly where the abbot intended, its neoclassical façade closing the view at the end of Calle Real. Step inside around eleven o’clock and the stained glass throws turquoise rectangles onto the stone floor; by midday the light has climbed to the vaulted ceiling, picking out gilt cherubs that look startled to be noticed. There is no admission charge, but the door is locked during siesta (14:00-17:30), so time the pause in your journey.

Torreparedones: a Roman town with no postcards

Three kilometres north-west, a dusty track signed “Yacimiento Arqueológico” bumps through the groves to Torreparedones. English guidebooks rarely mention it, which means you get the shattered walls, cisterns and necropolis almost to yourself. Wear proper shoes: the site covers 22 hectares of rocky terraces and only the forum has a handrail. Interpretation panels are in Spanish, but the gist is simple enough—this was an Ibero-Roman trading post that once minted its own coins. From the upper wall you can see Pedro Abad’s church tower framed by olives, a reminder that the valley has been continuously inhabited for 2,200 years.

Coffee, diesel and the Spanish-British mosque

Back in the village, the main commercial action clusters round the service-road roundabout. The Galp station usually undercuts motorway prices by four cents a litre—handy if you’ve picked up a hire car in Málaga. Fifty metres away, Bar Melchor Bollero opens at 06:30 for truckers’ breakfasts: thick coffee, orange juice pressed to order, a half-baguette of chorizo for €2.80. The menu is in Andalusian dialect—“pan con chicharrón, manteca colorá”—but pointing works.

Opposite the bar stands the only obvious curiosity that makes some travellers U-turn: the Basharat Mosque, built in 1989 by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. Its white minaret looks oddly at home beside the white village houses. For three days every late July the mosque hosts the Jalsa Salana convention; English suddenly becomes the main language in the bread queue, and the Galp cash machine runs out of twenties.

What arrives on the plate

Food is village-plain and olive-oil-heavy. Order salmorejo (chilled tomato purée thickened with bread) and the waitress will ask if you want it “con huevo y jamón”. Say yes: the toppings turn a bowl of pink soup into lunch. Flamenquín—pork loin wrapped in serrano ham, breadcrumbed and fried—arrives sliced like a Swiss roll, the ham edge giving each piece a neat pink halo. Winter visitors meet cachorreñas, a paprika-red soup thickened with day-old bread and sharpened with oranges from the coast an hour away. Pudding is usually perrunas, short biscuits that taste like Spanish shortbread; they keep for a week in the glove box if you can resist.

Sunday is the riskiest day. By 15:00 the bakery, the butcher and even the small supermarket have metal shutters down. Miss the lunch window and you’ll be eating crisps from the Repsol shop until the bar reopens at 20:00.

Walking the oil rail-bed

The old Córdoba–Puente Genil railway, closed since 1967, has been recycled into the Vía Verde del Aceite. The trail passes 4 km south of Pedro Abad; leave the car at the Ermita de la Piedra lay-by and you can walk or cycle 22 km of level track through continuous olives. Spring brings poppies between the sleepers; autumn smells of wet earth and drifting smoke from pruning fires. A hybrid bike copes fine—no need for suspension—and you’ll meet more goats than people.

When to stop, when to drive on

April–May and late September–October give warm days (22–27 °C) and cool nights; the groves glow chartreuse after rain. July and August are furnace-hot, though evenings on the riverbank can be pleasant if the levante wind is blowing. Winter is quiet, occasionally foggy, but you may catch the olive-mill in full swing and buy oil so fresh it stings the throat.

Pedro Abad has no hotels—nearest beds are in Córdoba, 35 minutes up the motorway. Treat the village as a two-hour pause: see the church, drink a coffee, walk the Roman walls, fill the tank with cheaper diesel, then rejoin the stream of traffic heading for Seville or the Costa del Sol. Stay longer and you’ll notice the silence deepening after 22:00, the way locals still glance at strangers, the smell of wood smoke drifting from chimneys on chilly March nights. There are worse places to miss the last turn-off.