Villanueva de Córdoba

The A-4 slips past another sign for “Los Pedroches” and most British number plates keep their foot down. Fifty minutes later the same drivers are queuing for a table at the service area outside Córdoba, unaware they have missed a town that sells the best jamón in Spain at supermarket prices and still rings church bells for midday. Villanueva de Córdoba sits five minutes off the motorway, 725 m up on the slate shoulder of the Sierra Morena, and it is used to being overlooked. That is beginning to change – but only just.

Dehesa Country: Where Pigs Have the Right of Way

From the junction the CO-701 winds between stone pines and the first of the endless oaks. These are not ornamental parkland trees; they are the economic engine of a landscape called dehesa, a man-made savannah that has been grazed since the Bronze Age. In autumn the ground under them is littered with acorns – bellotas – that fatten the black-footed pigs whose hams cure for three years in cellars on Calle Ancha. The smell inside those rooms – sweet, faintly fungal, like walking into a glass of oloroso – is the quickest way to understand why a single leg can fetch £400 in London and half that here.

Walk ten minutes uphill from the modern parish church and you reach the Dehesa Interpretation Centre, the one attraction English visitors consistently label “surprisingly interesting”. A ten-minute video (English subtitles on request) shows why the system only works if farmers keep fewer than two pigs per hectare; an interactive map lights up the 180 km of drove roads that once took cattle all the way to Córdoba’s cathedral quarter. Entry is free and the air-conditioning actually works – worth knowing when the thermometer on the stone façade opposite reads 38 °C in late July.

Plaza, Porches and the Monday Trap

Villanueva’s centre is a compact grid of white houses with ochre trim, laid out after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake flattened whatever was here before. The heart is Plaza de España, a rectangle of granite setts hemmed by three-storey houses whose ground-floor arches once held grain stores. Café tables appear at 11 a.m. and stay until the last resaca (hangover) is cured. On Thursdays the square doubles as the farmers’ market: one stall sells nothing but purple garlic the size of cricket balls, another will slice you 100 g of lomo for €3 and slip it between waxed paper like a school sandwich.

British visitors who arrive on a Monday lunchtime discover the town’s biggest drawback: shutters down everywhere. Even the bars that stay open serve only crisps and cubalibre mixers. Plan around it – or better, time your visit for a mid-morning coffee break and stay for lunch once the restaurants fire their ranges at 13:30 sharp.

Hills, Heat and Hammocks of Shade

Behind the town the land rises quickly. A signposted 6 km loop, the Ruta de la Encina Borracho, leaves from the old railway station (now a veterinary clinic) and climbs 250 m to a 900-year-old holm oak whose trunk needs four people to encircle it. The path is stony so trainers suffice; take water because the only bar en route opens only at weekends. Spring brings carpets of cistus and the distant bark of mastines guarding the sheep; in August the landscape turns the colour of digestive biscuits and every cicada in the province seems to have moved into the undergrowth.

Winter is a different proposition. Night frost is common from December to February and the odd Atlantic storm can dump 20 cm of snow, enough to make the A-4 pass above 1,000 m tricky. The town itself rarely sees more than a dusting, but if you are staying overnight pack layers – stone houses are built to stay cool, not warm.

What to Eat (and What to Ask For)

Order a plato de ibéricos variados at Bar La Espuela on Calle Real and you receive a board the size of a laptop: translucent jamón, coral-coloured lomo, chorizo that tastes of paprika rather than fire. The house red from the Valle de los Pedroches co-op is soft, unoaked Tempranillo – perfectly acceptable even at 11 a.m. if you have designated the passenger seat. For pudding walk two doors to Pastelería La Sierra and buy piononos, tiny spirals of custard dusted with cinnamon; they travel well if you can resist eating them in the car park.

Vegetarians are not an afterthought but close to it. Salmorejo – the thick tomato-and-bread soup – is served cold with diced boiled egg and is filling rather than fiery. Most places will make a revuelto de setas (scrambled eggs with wild mushrooms) in season provided you ask before the lunchtime rush. Vegans should probably bring supplies.

Overnight or Just Petrol and Jamón?

The town has two small hotels on the main avenue and both offer underground parking wide enough for a right-hand-drive Volvo. Double rooms hover round €65 including breakfast; if you need a pool, the three-star on the bypass has one but you will lose the walk-into-town convenience. A smarter plan is to treat Villanueva as the lunch stop that turns into an afternoon wander, then push on to Córdoba (45 min) or Jaén (55 min) for the night.

If you do stay, rise early and walk to the covered market on Avenida de la Constitución. Stallholders will vacuum-pack jamón for customs and the price difference covers a night’s accommodation: a 7 kg bone-in pata negra that retails at £900 in Borough Market costs €550 here, and they throw in the string bag.

When the Bells Stop

By 15:00 the square empties, waiters stack chairs and the sun moves far enough west to turn the church tower the colour of burnt cream. Swifts replace swallows and the only sound is the click of dominos from the senior citizens’ club under the arches. Villanueva de Córdoba will never headline an Andalucía itinerary, but that is precisely why it is worth the five-minute detour. Fill a bag with ham, stretch your legs under 900-year-old oaks and remember: the motorway will still be there when you are ready to rejoin the rush.