Los Villares

The morning flight from Manchester lands at Granada before eleven. Twenty-five minutes after collecting the hire-car keys you’re already climbing through silver-green terraces that smell faintly of cut grass and engine oil. At 640 m the air cools; mobile signal flickers to 3G, then vanishes. A hand-painted board reads “Los Villares 23669 – Jaén”. You have left the motorway, the duty-free and the English breakfast behind. Ahead is a grid of white cubes balanced on a ridge, every roof pointed at an ocean of olive trees.

Los Villares is not glamorous. Guidebooks ignore it, which is why British villa companies like it. They buy old cortijos, add infinity pools and market them as “peaceful, authentic, forty-five minutes to Granada”. The description is half true: the peace is immediate, Granada is fifty-five on a clear day, and “authentic” means you will hear tractors at dawn and church bells every quarter-hour. The village itself is home to 5,200 permanent residents, a number that swells in August when cousins arrive from Madrid and Barcelona and the plaza fills with prams and cigarette smoke.

What the brochures never mention

There is no centre in the postcard sense. The ayuntamiento, chemist and only cash machine squat around a triangle of concrete called Plaza de la Constitución. Bars open onto the square, but they are social clubs, not tourist terraces. Order a caña and you will be charged €1.20, provided the barman recognises you. If he doesn’t, the price rises to €1.50 and you’ll still be cheaper than bottled water at Gatwick. The church, Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, closes at lunch and reopens when the sacristan feels like it; the key hangs on a nail inside the door if you’re determined.

Architecture is domestic, not monumental. Houses are one or two storeys, lime wash refreshed every spring so the village glows butter-yellow at dusk. Rejas guard geraniums; dogs sleep in shade. Narrow lanes climb, fall, then climb again. Heels are useless; trainers suffice for the twenty-minute circuit that takes you past the olive-cooperative, the junior school and the cemetery where plastic flowers outlive the people they commemorate. From the upper streets the view stretches north to Sierra Mágina, snow-dusted until April, south over forty kilometres of uninterrupted olive grove. On hazy days the horizon smudges into the Guadalquivir plain and you understand why locals call the landscape “el mar de olivos”.

Walking without way-markers

Footpaths exist because farmers need them, not because hikers pay. Set off south-east on the Camino de los Castillejos and within ten minutes the tarmac gives way to reddish earth scored by tractor tyres. The going is gentle but constant; every ridge reveals another ridge. Olives a thousand years old thicken into gnomish shapes, their trunks hollow enough to shelter two people when the sun pounds in July. Spring brings ox-eye daisies between the rows; autumn smells of crushed fruit and diesel. There are no gates, no admission charges, no interpretation boards. Take water, a hat and the co-ordinates of your rental; Google Maps confuses farm tracks with A-roads and the latter turn into gravel without warning.

Cyclists arrive from Alcalá la Real, 18 km away, chasing 400 m of ascent and almost no traffic before ten o’clock. The loop through Los Villares, Venta de Cárdenas and back via the JV-3402 is favourite with Granada clubs: smooth asphalt, views, and a bar that grills pork fillet over holm-oak embers for €9 including wine. Hire bikes in Jaén city; the village has no shop and no repair kit.

Oil, not souvenirs

The crop is Picual, high in polyphenols, peppery at the back of the throat. November to February the cooperative works 24-hour shifts; lorries queue outside the mill carrying olives still warm from the tree. Visitors are tolerated if they stay clear of the conveyor belts. Ask inside and someone will pour last year’s oil onto a plastic spoon and watch your face. If you wince at the bitterness they nod approvingly. Five-litre containers sell for €28, too heavy for hand luggage but perfect if you’re driving home. British customs allow up to twenty litres provided it’s for personal use – remember the receipt.

Meals are built around the same bottle. Breakfast at Bar El Chisco: toasted baguette rubbed with tomato, a drizzle of oil, coffee with milk for €2.40. Lunch might be pisto – aubergine, pepper and tomato reduced to jam – topped by a fried egg. Evening means solomillo de la casa, pork fillet charred outside, blushing inside, served with chipped potatoes and a quarter-litre of house red that costs less than the London tube fare to Paddington. Vegetarians survive on salmorejo, thicker and creamier than gazpacho, garnished with diced ham that can be left off if you ask. Pudding is usually ignored; fruit or a shot of pacharán instead.

When to come, when to leave

April and May bring daytime temperatures of 22 °C, nights cool enough for a jumper. The grove floor is carpeted with wild lupins and the air smells of broom and wet soil. September repeats the thermometer but light is harsher, the land dusty after three months without rain. Both seasons suit walkers; both avoid the olive harvest chaos and the August exodus when Spanish families occupy every villa and firework rockets over the church tower until four a.m.

Winter is underestimated. Daytime can reach 15 °C; by night the village sits above the thermal inversion so central-heating bills are lower than Sussex. The downside is access: the JV-3402 is salted but not priority, and a rare snowfall in January 2021 cut Los Villares off for forty-eight hours. Summer, on the other hand, is reliable. At 640 m nights drop to 20 °C even when Jaén city swelters at 38 °C. The catch is water: many rural rentals rely on agricultural wells. If the spring is dry the council rations supply and pools can’t be topped up. Ask the owner before booking July or August.

The honesty paragraph

Los Villares will not change your life. There are no Michelin stars, no artisan gin distilleries, no white-washed boutique hotels with rooftop yoga. The nearest supermarket is a 12-minute drive; public transport is two buses a day to Jaén, one of which turns round if passenger numbers fall below four. Mobile coverage remains patchy, and flies gather round the pool at dusk whatever the estate agent promises. What the village offers is a pause: the sound of wind in olive leaves, church bells counting the hours, a bar where the television is switched off and the barman remembers how you like your coffee. If that feels like enough, come. If you need museums, taxis after midnight or oat-milk flat whites, stay in Granada and visit on a day trip. The olive groves will still be here, silent and very, very wide.