Navas de San Juan

At 654 metres above sea level, the thermometer outside the pharmacy on Plaza de la Constitución can read six degrees cooler than Jaén city an hour away. That single detail explains why half of Navas de San Juan’s 5,000 inhabitants still keep a winter coat hanging behind the front door even though Andalucía is supposed to be a land of perpetual sunshine. Up here, the Sierra Morena breathes down the village’s neck, and the olive groves ripple away like corrugated iron catching the light.

The Smell of Money

Between October and February the air turns grassy and sharp. Lorryloads of picual olives rumble into the cooperative on the south side of town, where a modern hammer-mill extracts oil so fresh it stings the throat. Visitors are welcome—walk in through the lorry entrance, ask for “una visita” and someone will hand you a plastic cup of liquid the colour of early cider. Swig it like a shot and you’ll understand why locals call it oro: the first mouthful tastes like liquid gold with a peppery slap at the back. Buy a five-litre tin for about €35; the same oil fetches double in Borough Market.

The rest of the year the cooperative gates stay shut, but the smell lingers. It seeps from the hairline cracks in the terracotta walls of Calle Nueva, drifts through the wrought-iron grilles where geraniums sit in olive-oil tins, and settles in the folds of your jacket. After a day you stop noticing; after a week you recognise it on other travellers in the Jaén bus station.

A Town that Closes on Mondays

Navas makes few concessions to tourism. Monday is still washing-day-cum-strike-day: bars shutter their kitchens, the bakery switches its sign to “pan vendido” by noon, and the single cash machine inside Caja Rural bank often spits out its last €20 note before breakfast. Plan accordingly. Bring cash, stock up on water, and don’t expect brunch.

What you get instead is a grid of chalk-white lanes built for donkeys, not cars. Park at the top by the cemetery and walk downhill; the streets are too narrow for comfort and locals park with the handbrake off so neighbours can nudge cars aside. Peek through any open doorway and you’ll see a formula repeated: dark slate floor, plastic tablecloth, television flickering in the corner, and an elderly woman shelling beans who will nod you good afternoon without pausing her thumbs.

The Church that Needs Phoning Ahead

The 16th-century Iglesia de San Juan Bautista squats at the highest point, its bell tower acting as the village compass. From the outside it looks sandstone-solid, the colour of digestive biscuits. Inside, the nave is unexpectedly light, thanks to limewash applied annually by the same family for four generations. There’s a gilded altarpiece shipped from Seville after the original burned in 1936, and a side chapel whose fresco of the Last Supper includes a guinea pig on the platter—an inside joke painted by a bored restorer in 1978.

The door stays locked unless you ask. Cross the square to the tiny Oficina de Turismo (open 10–14 Tue–Sat, closed the rest of the time because the key-holder works mornings at the olive mill). She’ll radio the sacristan, who arrives on a Honda moped, helmet still on, jangling keys like a gaoler. Entry is free; leaving a euro in the box keeps the lights on.

Walking Without Waymarks

Foreign guidebooks ignore the countryside here, which is exactly why it’s worth pulling on boots. Head north-east past the football pitch; within ten minutes the tarmac gives way to a camino of compacted red earth flanked by olives older than the BBC. No signposts, no ticket office, just the occasional stone bench carved with a farmer’s initials. After 5 km you’ll reach the abandoned cortijo of El Contador, roofless since the 1950s but with its olive press still intact—wooden screws thick as telegraph poles, iron gears frozen mid-rotation. Retrace your steps or loop south on a farm track that drops you back by the petrol station, total distance 9 km, elevation gain negligible. Take water; there’s no bar until you hit tarmac again.

Cyclists find the same web of lanes almost car-free. A 30 km circuit south to the village of Villanueva del Arzobispo and back involves 400 m of climbing, olive-scented descents and one café that does cold beer and a plate of jamón for €4. Road bikes cope fine; gravel bikes are overkill.

Food that Doesn’t Photograph Well

Camera phones struggle with brown stews, which is why Navas rarely trends on Instagram. The local menu hasn’t changed since Franco’s time: migas (fried breadcrumbs with garlic and chorizo), pipirrana (tomato-pepper salad heavy on olive oil), and flamenquín—pork loin wrapped in serrano ham, bread-crumbed and deep-fried until it resembles a bronzed arm. Order it at Bar Almazara on Calle Cristo and you’ll get two rolls the size of rolling pins, plus chips, for €9. Vegetarians get tortilla; vegans get lettuce.

Pudding is rice pudding or tocino de cielo, a yolk-heavy custard that tastes like crème brûlée without the theatre. Coffee comes in glasses, scalding and bitter; ask for “café con leche semidesnatada” if you want it drinkable. House wine from Valdepeñas is served in half-litre carafes for €3.50—lighter than Rioja, easier on the head, and no one raises an eyebrow if you order it at lunchtime.

When the Village Lets its Hair Down

San Juan Bautista arrives on 24 June. For three days the population doubles as cousins return from Madrid and Barcelona. Brass bands march at 02:00, fireworks ricochet off the olive terraces, and teenage girls in flamenco dresses practise sevillanas in the petrol-station forecourt. Sleep is theoretical unless your hotel faces away from the plaza. Book early; the single three-star hotel (Hotel El Coto, 28 rooms, pool on the roof) fills up in May.

August’s feria is tamer: foam party in the polideportivo, paella for 500 cooked in a pan the diameter of a satellite dish, and a procession of women in straw hats carrying baskets of bread and olives to the church. It’s photogenic, but the heat (often 38 °C by midday) thins crowds by mid-afternoon. Sensible visitors siesta, then re-emerge at 22:00 when the mercury drops to a mere 28 °C.

Getting There, Leaving Again

No railway line reaches this corner of Jaén province. The ALSA bus from Jaén capital leaves at 07:15 Monday–Friday, arrives 08:25, and returns at 14:00—fine for a day trip if you like early starts, useless otherwise. Hire a car at Granada airport (90 minutes away) or Jaén station (65 km, mostly empty A-6100). Petrol is cheaper at the village Repsol than on the motorway; fill up before you leave.

Mobile signal flickers to 3G in the old quarter; WhatsApp voice messages stutter, Google Maps caches slowly. Download offline maps the night before. The tourist office has free Wi-Fi but shuts for lunch at 14:00 sharp.

Drive out at sunset and the olive groves glow copper, the village bell tower shrinks in the rear-view mirror, and you realise Navas de San Juan has given you what the Costa del Sol ran out of years ago: a working Spanish town that doesn’t need you, but is polite enough to let you watch while it gets on with life.