Alcudia de Monteagud

The church bell tolls twice and the sound drifts downhill, past white-washed walls that grip the mountainside like steps cut into rock. At 1,030 m above sea-level, Alcudia de Monteagud is already in the sky; the Mediterranean glimmers 50 km south-west, yet feels irrelevant once you are up here. The village counts barely 150 souls, most of them over sixty, and the louthing is the wind combing through almond trees that refuse to grow straight.

A village that ends in thin air

Arriving is half the experience. Leave the A-92 at Fiñana, climb 22 km of switch-backs, and watch the thermometer drop five degrees by the time the stone houses appear. The road is asphalted but single-lane in places; if a shepherd’s pick-up rounds the bend, someone has to reverse. Hire cars survive, yet clutch pedals smell by the summit. There is no petrol station, no cash machine, and the solitary bar keeps sporadic hours that follow harvests rather than Google. Fill the tank in Olula del Río and bring coins—mobile coverage is patchy enough to make contactless payments fail mid-transaction.

Park where the lane flattens beside the tiny plaza. From here everything is walkable in eight minutes, though the gradients turn it into a calf workout. Head uphill past geraniums in paint-tin pots until the cobbles run out at Era Grande, a 40-m threshing circle that locals simply call la era. Hemmed only by low stone walls, it feels like the village’s front porch suspended above empty space. Sunrise throws the Filabres ridge into bronze relief; at dusk the valley below melts through mauve and charcoal. Photographers talk about “golden hour” everywhere in Andalucía—up here it lasts longer because the horizon is 80 km distant and the air is thin.

Stone, slate and silence

Alcudia’s houses are not postcard-pretty; they are practical. Walls are thick enough to keep December nights at 5 °C bearable without heating beyond a wood stove. Roofs carry Roman-style tiles heavy enough to resist the cierzo wind that barrels across the plateau in February. Many dwellings stand empty, keys left with cousins in Almería city. Peek through iron grilles and you see hams hanging from beams, esparto grass baskets, 1950s calendars still pinned to plaster. The architectural highlight is the Iglesia de la Anunciación, its square tower rebuilt after lightning in 1897. Step inside and the temperature drops another notch; pews are polished by generations of jackets, and the gold leaf on the altarpiece is restrained, almost apologetic.

There is no craft market, no olive-wood chess sets, no flamenco dress shop. What you get instead is acoustic space. Close a gate and the click echoes off three slopes; conversations carry from one terrace to the next without raising voices. Mid-week you can stand in the main street for ten minutes and meet nobody except perhaps María Dolores wheeling a two-wheeled shopping trolley to the bread van. The van arrives Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11:15, horn tooting like a 1970s ice-cream truck. If you want fresh baguettes, queue then; by noon the driver is already heading downhill to Laroya.

Trails that start at the back door

Maps plastered on the noticeboard mark the GR-244, a long-distance path that stitches together half-abandoned hamlets across the Filabres. A 10 km loop circles Alcudia, way-marked with yellow-and-white flashes and taking roughly three hours. The first section climbs past cherry terraces to an old snow-well, nevero, where ice was once packed with straw for summer markets in Almería. Beyond, the trail follows a slate ridge dotted with dwarf fan palms, the only green that refuses to grey in July. Spring brings purple satureja flowers; autumn smells of wild rosemary after rain. Carry a litre of water per person—there are no fountains, and the altitude dehydrates faster than you expect. Summer midday heat regularly tops 35 °C even at a thousand metres; set off at dawn and you’ll share the path only with hoopoes.

Winter hiking is gentler, daylight crisp and bright, but nights drop below freezing. If snow settles, the access road closes until a municipal plough battles up from Urrácal. Book accommodation ahead during February school holidays; Spanish families rent village houses to let children experience real snow without Pyrenean prices.

What passes for lunch

Food options inside Alcudia are limited to whatever the bar decides to cook—perhaps a plate of migas (fried breadcrumbs laced with chorizo) or a bowl of potaje de bacalao if the owner soaked salt cod the previous night. Portions are huge and rarely exceed €9, but opening hours depend on whether Antonio is helping his brother harvest olives. A safer bet is the ten-minute drive to Tahal, where a small café does a reliable vegetarian migas with peppers and grapes. Stock up on almonds and local honey at Chercos market on Sunday mornings; the produce comes from orchards you drove past, prices scribbled in biro on paper plates.

Festivals measured in decibels

Silence rules most of the year, but the village explodes for three days in mid-August when the fiesta patronal lures emigrants back from Barcelona and Murcia. Suddenly every house displays a flag, trestle tables block the lane, and a sound system appears in the plaza loud enough to rattle windows in Serón. The programme is reassuringly small-town: Saturday evening mass followed by paella for 200 people cooked in a pan the size of a satellite dish; Sunday morning procession with the statue of the Virgen de la Anunciación carried aloft; midnight fireworks that illuminate the threshing circle like daylight. Accommodation is impossible unless a cousin offers a sofa—book a house months ahead or base yourself in Macael, 35 minutes away, and drive up for the spectacle.

Holy Week is quieter, centred on a single candle-lit procession and choral singing that drifts through the alleys like a ghost. Temperatures can dip to 3 °C after dusk; bring a down jacket and a thermos if you plan to watch the entire via crucis.

Leaving without regrets

By 22:00 most evenings the village has retreated behind wooden shutters. Street lighting is deliberately dim to keep the Milky Way visible—lie on la era and you’ll count satellites by accident. The blackness is absolute enough to make the walk back to your car an act of faith; pack a head-torch. Alcudia de Monteagud will not entertain you in conventional fashion. It offers altitude, elbow-room and a lesson in how quietly humans can live when the nearest traffic light is 40 km away. If that sounds like enough, stay the night. If not, descend while the engine coolant is still warm and be in Almería city for tapas before bedtime. The mountain will still be there tomorrow, patient and unbothered, waiting for the next curious driver willing to trade convenience for breathing space.