Escañuela

The morning flight from Gatwick lands at Málaga before the Costa’s bars have finished hosing down last night’s sangria. Ninety minutes later, after a climb through almond terraces and a sudden ridge that blocks the Mediterranean breeze, the A-333 drops into a green-grey swell of olive trees. At its edge, chalk-white houses glint like salt on a margarita rim: Escanuela, population 900, altitude 316 m, no ATM, no tour buses, no souvenir tat.

Britons who motor straight past on the way to Granada’s palaces miss the point of inland Jaén. This is the world’s largest man-made woodland, two million trees in tight formation, and the village is a breather on its seaward wall. Locals call the landscape la mar de olivos—the olive sea—for good reason. From the cemetery hill at dawn the rows run to the horizon like Atlantic swells, turning from silver to pewter as the sun lifts over the Subbética hills.

What the guidebooks don’t print

There isn’t a monument to tick off. The 18th-century church of San Sebastián stands plain and barn-solid, its tower patched after the 1884 earthquake. Step inside and the air smells of candle wax and floor-polish; a single caretaker will lift the rope so you can see the gilded altar jammed between thick walls designed to withstand the next tremor. Five minutes is enough, but stay for the bells if they ring—metal cast in Seville in 1752 still carries clear across the groves.

The village map is a crossword of twelve streets. Park by the pharmacy (free) and walk; every lane ends at a mirador no bigger than a Sussex allotment. Housewives water geraniums, grandfathers read Marca on kitchen chairs dragged into the sun. Stop and you’ll be asked “¿De dónde viene?”—where do you come from—within thirty seconds. Answer, and you’ll be told the best place to eat migas, the day the olives start, and which English family bought the ruin on the corner.

Eating oil for breakfast

Tourism leaflets mumble about “oil culture”; here it is lived. Between November and January tractors towing plastic bins crawl like bright beetles through the groves. At 08:00 the cooperative on Calle Real fires up the mill; by 10:00 the first extra-virgin trickles into steel tanks. Ask inside and someone will hand you a plastic thimble of liquid chlorophyll—grassy, peppery, nothing like the supermarket stuff that’s older than the A-levels of the kid pouring it. Buy a five-litre tin for €28; Ryanair’s baggage limit is the only obstacle.

Food is built around the harvesters’ timetable. Breakfast is tostada rubbed with tomato and flooded with the new oil, served in Bar El Parque from 07:30—if the owner has risen before the pickers. Mid-day migas, fried breadcrumbs laced with garlic and chorizo, appear at 14:00 sharp. Dinner won’t be served anywhere before 20:30; turn up earlier and you’ll be offered a beer while the television shouts at full volume.

Paths for people, not postcards

There are no signed PR trails. Instead, farmers’ tracks cut straight lines between the olives. Pick any track heading south and within five minutes the village noise is replaced by the soft clack of picking poles. A gentle 6 km loop follows the Arroyo Salado to the ruined hamlet of Hacho—stone walls, a collapsed bread oven, fig trees sprouting from roofs—then climbs back on a stone-laid cañada once used for moving sheep to winter pasture. Trainers suffice; after rain the clay sticks like English cheddar, so carry a stick to scrape soles.

Spring brings ox-eye daisies between the trunks and the smell of fennel drifting over from abandoned terraces. Temperatures sit in the low 20s—perfect walking weather—whereas July and August can touch 40 °C by mid-day; during those months start before sunrise or risk melting into the tar.

When the village chooses to party

San Sebastián, patron and plague protector, is honoured on 20 January. The schedule is stubbornly local: 10:00 mass, 12:00 procession, 14:00 free stew for anyone holding a plate, 16:00 card tournament in the cultural centre. Visitors are welcome but there are no bilingual announcements or flamenco-for-tourists. In August the fiesta acquires plastic chairs, a sound system playing 1990s Europop, and a dodgem ride that blocks Calle Ancha for three nights. Both fiestas end with homemade fireworks—think rockets launched from a wine bottle—so stand up-wind.

The practical grind

Getting here: Málaga is served by easyJet, BA, Ryanair and Jet2 from around thirty UK airports. Collect a hire car—pre-book in July/August when fleet shrinks—and head north on the A-45, then A-92N past Antequera. Leave at junction 175, follow the A-333 for 19 km; the village sign is half-hidden by an olive tree. Petrol is cheaper at the supermarket station in Loja, 25 km earlier.

Staying: Apartamento Escanuela (two-bed, roof terrace, €70 a night) sits above the bakery—wake to the smell of churros. Casa de Aldea on Calle Gloria offers beamed ceilings and a fireplace for cool February nights (€90). Larger fincas with pools scatter the ridge towards Iznájar; useful if you need space for teenagers who complain there’s “nothing to do”.

Money and hours: The nearest cash machine is in Iznájar, 12 km south. Shops open 09:00–13:30, close, then 17:30–20:30; on Saturday afternoon and all Sunday you’ll rely on the Chinese bazaar by the church for emergency biscuits. Tuesday is market day—one fruit van, one fish van, one trailer of cheap clothes.

Winter warning: Night temperatures can dip to 2 °C; village houses have no central heating. Pack the same fleece you’d take to Norfolk in October and ask for extra blankets. If it rains heavily the A-333 floods at the Arroyo Salado bridge; carry snacks in case you’re marooned for a couple of hours.

Why bother?

Escanuela will never compete with the Alcázar or the Alhambra. It offers instead the rarity of a Spanish village still listening to its own heartbeat rather than the rustle of guidebook pages. Come if you want to taste olive oil minutes after extraction, walk through a forest that pays for schoolbooks and pensions, and practise your Spanish on people who have time to talk back. Leave if you need night-life, souvenirs, or somewhere to use your contactless card. The olives will still be there tomorrow, waiting for the next quiet traveller who turns off the motorway.