Parauta

The first thing you notice is the bench. Someone has painted “Kiss me in Parauta” across the slats in wobbly white letters, and half the visitors are queueing to oblige while the other half photograph them. It sits on the edge of the village, back to the houses, front to 30 km of empty Genal valley. Below, cork-oak slopes drop 600 m; beyond, the Ronda mountains layer into a hazy ridgeline. The altitude is 799 m, high enough for the air to feel rinsed, and for the afternoon sun to bite rather than bake.

Parauta is not shy about its lack of sights. The council website lists four: a sixteenth-century church, a stone fountain, a chestnut wood and a picnic table. That is it. No castle, no museum, no gift shop. The single grocery opens at nine, shuts at two, and doubles as the post office. If you need cash, the nearest ATM is 12 km away and usually empty. Mobile signal dies the moment you duck into a side street. In short, the village is magnificently under-equipped for modern tourism – and that, oddly, is what pulls people in.

The Enchanted Forest that went viral

Ten minutes’ walk above the houses a dirt track enters Los Reales de Sierra Bermeja, a 1,400 m slab of pink peridotite rock that glows copper at dusk. Somebody – no one now admits who – began carving tiny faces into the trunks: fairies, dwarfs, owls, a dragon that loops round a chestnut like a bark necklace. Children christened it the Bosque Encantado, posted the photos, and Spanish TikTok did the rest. At weekends the 3 km loop is nose-to-back with buggies; mid-week you get it to yourself and the resident Iberian nuthatch.

The path is push-chair friendly but still climbs 120 m; trainers are wise. Interpretation boards appear every so often – in Spanish only – giving the old names for autumn colours: “color de miel” for the chestnuts, “corteza de tigre” for the arbutus. Allow 90 minutes with small legs, 45 without. At the far end a wooden platform looks straight down to the Genal and across to Júzcar, the former “Smurf village”, now fading back to white.

When the day-trippers leave

By half past four the coach parties retreat to the coast and Parauta exhales. Old men re-occupy the bench outside Bar Central; women carry bread and leeks in plastic bags; someone’s grandfather hoses the dust off the street in front of his house – an Andalusian habit that baffles northern visitors. The silence is not theatrical; it is simply the volume at which this place has always operated.

Supper choices are limited to four restaurants, all on the same 80 m stretch. El Anafe does the best wild-boar stew – dark, chestnut-sweet, big enough for two. Reserve or arrive before 20:00; by 21:30 the chef is mopping the floor. Next door, Casa Curro serves migas on Sunday morning: crumbs of day-old bread fried in olive oil with chorizo and grapes, a dish devised to use up the weekend loaf. Expect to pay €12–14 for a main, €2.50 for a caña. Vegetarians get omelette or soup; coeliacs should bring their own bread.

Chestnuts, oil and the smell of winter

October turns the valley copper and the village smells of wood smoke and new oil. Families haul sacks of chestnuts to the co-operative press in nearby Pujerra; the same week Parauta stages its modest Fiesta de la Aceituna. There is no parade, just a table under the plane trees where you can taste oil pressed 48 hours earlier, poured over toast rubbed with tomato and garlic. If you want to buy a 500 ml tin, bring cash – the man keeping notes in his cap pocket has no card reader.

Winter proper arrives in January. Night temperatures slip below zero; the streets ice over and the fountain develops a ghostly rim. The British tendency to romanticise “authentic” Spain meets its match here: many houses lack central heating, and the bar closes early when the owner decides it is too cold to stay open. Come February the almond blossom drifts across the road like light snow and the village remembers how to smile again.

Getting there, getting out

From Málaga airport the hire-car queue is the slowest part. Take the A-357 past the lakes, fork onto the A-376 signposted Ronda. At kilometre 134 a Repsol station marks the turn for the MA-545. From there it is 22 km of hairpins: first cork oaks, then pines, finally white cubes of Parauta clamped to the ridge. Total driving time is 1 h 45 min unless you meet a lorry hauling olives; overtaking lanes are mythical.

Public transport exists in theory. A Monday-to-Friday bus leaves Ronda at 07:15 and returns at 14:00, which gives you four hours in the village – enough for the forest loop and lunch, provided you do not miss the departure. A taxi from Ronda costs €35 each way; most drivers will wait two hours if you pre-book.

What the brochures leave out

August is frantic. The population balloons to 1,200 as descendants of emigrants fly in from Barcelona and Brussels. Every parking space within 2 km fills by 10:30; the narrow main street becomes a one-way human tide. If you must visit in high summer, come on a Tuesday, bring water, and accept that the forest will echo with Spanish pop playlists rather than songbirds.

Rain catches people out. The Genal valley is one of the wettest corners of Andalucía; a single October storm can turn the forest path into slick mud and swell the stream crossings. The village website still lists the walk as “always open”; carry a light waterproof and shoes with grip.

Finally, altitude matters. Even in May the evening breeze carries a chill. That Instagram shot of the painted bench needs a cardigan draped somewhere nearby; ignore this and you will shiver your way through the sunset everyone insists you stay for.

Leaving without the hard sell

Parauta will not change your life. You will not tick off a world heritage site or brag about a Michelin meal. What you get is a slice of inland Spain running at its own cadence: slow, sometimes creaky, indifferent to whether you come back. Drive away as the lights flick on in the valley and you realise the village has already forgotten you – and that, for once, feels like the most honest welcome of all.