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about Torredelcampo
A dynamic municipality near Jaén; major olive-oil producer with extensive woodland.
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Dawn at 640 Metres
The first tractors start at six, headlights bobbing between silver-green rows that stretch to the horizon. By seven the air smells of diesel and damp earth; by eight the sun has burned off the night frost that forms here even in April. Torredelcampo sits on a raised lip of the Jaén plateau, 640 m above sea level and forty minutes’ drive north-east of Granada airport. It is not perched, secret or any other fairy-tale adjective – it is simply the place that produces more extra-virgin olive oil per square mile than anywhere else in Europe. The town’s 14,000 inhabitants call it work, not tourism, and they will happily tell you so over the bar while the coffee machine hisses.
A Town That Learnt to Live with Cyclists
Most foreigners arrive on two wheels, freewheeling down the Vía Verde del Aceite, a 128-km cycle path converted from a nineteenth-century railway. The old station is a kilometre south of the centre; follow the signed footpath from Calle Virgen de la Cabeza, not your phone, or you’ll end up in someone’s driveway. The reward is a 55-metre lit tunnel and a gradient that never tops 2 % – gentle enough after the climbs from Alcaudete. Bike racks sit outside Hotel Torrezaf and the Hostal El Parque; nobody bothers locking them, a novelty for anyone used to London alleyways.
Walkers can follow the same track, but bring water and a hat. Shade is theoretical in July when the thermometer nudges 40 °C and the olives shimmer like mirages. In January the same fields turn violet at dusk and you’ll need a fleece; the plateau holds cold air like a bowl.
What the Castle Left Behind
The Arabic fortress is mostly rubble now – a few walls and a gate you can trace with a fingertip. Still, climb the remaining stones and you understand why the Moors bothered: the view is a chessboard of cultivation, 360 degrees of uninterrupted monoculture. Closer in, the sixteenth-century Iglesia de la Asunción blocks the skyline with sober Renaissance brickwork. Inside, the baroque retablos are gilt enough to make a parish priest blush, but the real attraction is the side door left open for the resident swallows. Their nests clog the cornices; worship competes with wings.
Back outside, Plaza de la Constitución does what Spanish plazas have done since the nineteenth century – provides a roofed arcade for the grocer, the lottery ticket man and the café owner who knows exactly how you like your tostada even if you met only yesterday. Order a café con leche and you will be charged €1.20; ask for a “white coffee” and the price mysteriously doubles. Stick to Spanish, or at least to pointing.
Oil, Not Instagram
Torredelcampo does not do tastings in chandeliered bodegas. The cooperative on Calle San Cristóbal smells of wet grass and loud machinery; visits are possible if you e-mail ahead and don’t mind wearing a hairnet. You will watch olives tumble into hoppers, be weighed, washed, crushed and spun into luminous green liquid in under forty minutes. The guide, usually the foreman’s cousin, quotes acidity levels and polyphenol counts like a football statto. Buy a five-litre tin at factory door prices (around €32 in 2024) and the cashier throws in a free plastic funnel – practical, not pretty, exactly like the town.
Restaurants cook with the same oil the way the British boil potatoes. Migas – fried breadcrumbs laced with garlic and chorizo – arrive as a heap capable of soaking up last night’s wine. Gazpacho is served in glass tumblers, thick enough to qualify as soup in winter. If you need a break from Andaluz intensity, La Floresta will grill a magret of duck and even print an English menu, though the waiter will roll his eyes while doing it. Vegetarians survive on spinach-&-cheese ravioli at Hacienda Juncal; phone before turning up or you’ll get the standard jamón platter and an apology.
When the Town Lets Its Hair Down
August’s feria is not a quaint folkloric postcard; it is five nights of thumping reggaeton and fairground rides that creak alarmingly. Casetas sponsored by local builders serve fino at €2 a glass until the small hours. Book accommodation early or stay in Jaén and pay €25 for a taxi back. Ear-plugs are not optional unless you can sleep through a sound system that competes with the mosque-sized loudspeakers of neighbouring towns.
Semana Santa is quieter but no less intense. Six brotherhoods carry their pasos through streets barely wider than the floats; trumpets echo off stone and the scent of beeswax hangs for days. Visitors are welcome as long as they don’t block doorways – residents have claimed their spots with chairs since January.
May brings the Cruces de Mayo, a neighbourly competition to smother portable crosses with carnations and geraniums. Walk the back streets and you’ll be offered homemade cake and a glass of vino del país, a fortified red that tastes like alcoholic Ribena. Refusal is rude; pacing yourself is wise.
The Practical Bits That Matter
The town spreads along the A-316; most services cluster within a ten-minute radius of the church. Banks have ATMs that accept British cards, but supermarkets shut at 14:00 on Saturday and stay closed Sunday – stock up or you’ll be surviving on service-station crisps. The big filling station on the bypass does take contactless after 22:00; the town centre’s smaller garages do not.
Accommodation is functional rather than fabulous. Hotel Torrezaf has renovated rooms for €65 a night including garage parking; Hostal El Parque is €10 cheaper and faces the park where old men play pétanque under sodium lights. Both offer half-board deals that revolve around fried fish and the local olive-oil sponge cake – dry by British standards, acceptable when drowned in coffee.
If you are car-less, buses run to Jaén every thirty minutes on weekdays, hourly at weekends. The journey takes twenty minutes and costs €1.55; buy your ticket on board and have change. From Jaén’s bus station you can reach Granada in ninety minutes, Córdoba in two hours.
Worth the Detour?
Torredelcampo will never compete with the Alhambra for wow-factor. It offers instead the chance to see the supply chain behind every bottle labelled “Jaén” on a British supermarket shelf. Come for the Vía Verde, stay for the oil, time your exit before the feria speakers power up, and you will have tasted a slice of Spain that most coach parties miss.
