Benitagla

The road tilts at 12% before the village even bothers to announce itself. A hand-painted plank reads “Benitagla, 950 m” and suddenly the hire-car engine is wheezing in second gear while almond trees give way to limestone scarps that look suspiciously like unfinished quarries. You have left the A-334 behind, climbed the ALP-714 for twenty minutes, and arrived at one of the least noisy places in mainland Europe—population fifty-eight, plus the occasional grazing donkey that refuses to be counted.

Why the map still bothers with a dot this small

At first sight Benitagla appears to be a single street that changed its mind. Whitewashed cubes cling to the ridge like irregular teeth, their television aerials angled towards Granada in the hope of catching something other than static. The village owes its existence to Berber settlers who terraced the slopes in the twelfth century; the name means “son of Tagla”, though nobody can tell you who Tagla was or why her offspring warranted a hillside. What matters today is that the houses still face south-east, catching winter sun and turning their backs to the Filabres wind that can scrape 40 km/h across the balconies.

Because the place never grew, it never modernised. There is no petrol station, cash machine, pharmacy or souvenir shop—only the parish church of the Inmaculada Concepción, unlocked every morning by whichever neighbour drew the short straw. Step inside and you will find a single nave, six pews and a plaster Virgin whose paint flakes like sunburnt skin. The bell still marks the quarters; at night you can hear it from the mirador even when the village generator has gone to sleep.

Walking without waymarks

The GR-244 long-distance path skirts the upper edge of the settlement, but the real pleasure lies in abandoning grand routes and following the goat tracks that fan out above the almond terraces. Within ten minutes the last rooftop is below you and the only sound is the crunch of thyme under boot. The limestone is sharp—proper walking shoes are non-negotiable—and the gradient never quite settles, but the reward is a 270-degree panorama that stretches from the Tabernas badlands to the snow-capped Sierra Nevada on clear spring mornings. Expect to meet nobody; if you do, it will probably be Manolo checking his beehives and happy to point out the abandoned threshing circle where locals once winnowed barley by hand.

Summer walks are possible only at dawn. By 10 a.m. the thermometer kisses 34 °C and the landscape turns the colour of digestive biscuits. Autumn brings out the scent of wet resin and the first wood smoke; winter can dust the ridge with snow, but days are crisp and the air so clean that Almería’s coast—40 km away—appears as a thin metal strip on the horizon.

What you will not find—and what you might

There is no restaurant, no Sunday market, no artisan brewery. The nearest bar opens randomly in Benizalón, ten minutes down the mountain, and serves grilled pork, chips and a lukewarm Cruzcampo for €8. Inside Benitagla itself you can sometimes buy a jar of local almonds from the house with the green gate; knock twice and hand over two euros. If you are invited in for a glass of water, accept—it arrives cloudy with lime and tastes better than anything that ever saw a filter.

The fiesta calendar is refreshingly brief. On 8 December the village squeezes around the church for the Patrona, a procession that lasts twenty-three minutes and ends with anis and sponge cake in the plaza. Easter is even quieter: no pasos, no brass bands, just a single mass and the resigned clang of the bell. August livens up when emigrants return from Barcelona and Basel; suddenly every other house pumps out Queen’s greatest hits and elderly men play cards under fairy lights strung between washing lines. Visit then if you want conversation; come any other time if you want silence.

Getting there without a scrape

From either Almería or Alicante airport you face a straightforward dual-carriageway dash to Tabernas, famous among film buffs as Europe’s spaghetti-western backdrop. Fill the tank and empty the bladder there—after the turning for Benitagla the only facilities are a cliff edge and the occasional passing goat. The ALP-714 is tarmac all the way but barely wider than a Surrey lane; meet a delivery van and someone has to reverse. First-timers should avoid night arrival: the road is unlit and the drop-off is Moroccan in its indifference to health-and-safety.

Parking is free on the small upper plaza. Spaces number fourteen; on fiesta weekend you will circle for twenty minutes while a cousin from Madrid blocks two bays with a Toyota Hilux. Coaches are impossible—if you arrive with a cycling club, prepare for a walk uphill from the cemetery where the road runs out.

When to cut your losses

Benitagla is not for everyone. If you need a flat white before 9 a.m., stay on the coast. If the idea of no mobile signal makes you twitch, download offline maps or choose another sierra. Rain turns the streets into rivulets of white mud and can trap a small car for 24 hours; July haze erases the famous views and replaces them with a beige duvet. Come in late April for almond blossom, or mid-October when the light turns honey-coloured and the air smells of wet slate and woodsmoke.

Leave before sunset if you are driving back to the coast—deer emerge at dusk and the road has no barriers. Alternatively, book a room in Cantoria or Laroya, half an hour away, where the beds are firm and the owners will not mind if you turn up muddy. Benitagla itself has no accommodation, and the villagers intend to keep it that way. They have seen what tourism did to Mojácar and they prefer their doors unphotographed, their conversations unrecorded, their silence sold only by the hour.