Jimena

The morning flight from Málaga drops you onto the A-7, and forty minutes later the turn-off for Jimena appears between vast plantations of avocados and citrus. From here the road climbs 600 metres in twenty minutes, cork-oak giving way to shoulder-high olives that shimmer silver when the wind combs through them. At the summit sits a village of barely five thousand souls, its castle keep poking above the canopy like a broken tooth.

British number plates start to thin out after the motorway; by the time the first white-washed wall appears, the only traffic is a farmer on a quad bike hauling crates of just-picked Picual olives. Jimena has never needed a theme-park makeover: the weekly market still sells house-slippers and garlic braids, and the evening paseo is timed to coincide with the cooling breeze that drifts up from the Mediterranean, visible as a pale stripe on the horizon.

A castle you can walk into for nothing

The Alcázar—part-Moorish, part-English Civil War ruin—opens straight onto the plaza. There is no ticket booth, no audio guide, just a single iron gate that creaks like a pirate film. Climb the spiral stair and you look south over two million olive trees and north into Los Alcornocales, Europe’s largest cork forest. On weekdays you may share the ramparts only with swifts and the occasional German hiker sketching the ridge line in charcoal. Weekends are livelier: families spread rugs on the battlements and unwrap foil parcels of tortilla while grandparents point out the railway station seven kilometres below, a toy-town cluster of orange tiles beside the Hozgarganta river.

The structure itself is “semi-ruined” according to the English-language guidebook pinned to the church noticeboard. Translation: missing floors, waist-high grass in the old chapel, and enough loose masonry to make you watch your step. Yet the 360-degree payoff is worth the scrabble, especially at dusk when the olives turn from grey to pewter and the first lights of Gibraltar blink on thirty kilometres away.

Streets built for donkeys, not estate cars

Park at the top by the Iglesia de la Encarnación and walk. The lanes are barely two metres wide, cobbled in river stone polished to marble by centuries of leather soles. Hire cars scrape their wing-mirrors, locals in tiny Seat 600s perform eighteen-point turns, and everyone accepts the system: reverse downhill until a doorway appears, tuck in, breathe in. The reward is a town centre free from exhaust noise; the only engine you hear is the olive press on the edge of the village, humming like distant bees when the harvest starts in November.

Houses open straight onto the street, front doors ajar so the cooler air can move through. Peek through and you glimpse patios no bigger than a London kitchen but crammed with geraniums, lemon trees in terracotta pots, and the obligatory tortoiseshell cat asleep on a wicker chair. Smell changes with every doorway: wood-smoke in winter, jasmine in May, drying tobacco in late summer when farmers hang the leaves from attic beams.

Oil, cheese and the pig that fed the family

Jimena’s restaurants don’t bother with tasting menus; they serve what the matriarch decides to cook that morning. At Bar La Tasca the chalkboard lists three dishes: tagarninas (wild thistle stew), conejo al ajillo, and a plate of ibérico that the owner’s cousin cured in the next valley. Olive oil arrives in a glass bottle stripped of labels; pour it onto rough bread and you understand why Sierra Mágina has its own denominación—peppery at the back of the throat, green enough to make you cough pleasantly.

For self-caterers the Friday market supplies everything else: goat’s cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves, morcón sausage flecked with paprika, and new-season oil sold in old water bottles at €6 a litre. Bring cash; the nearest ATM is inside the post office and it still closes for siesta.

Vegetarians survive on spinach and chickpea stews, but the village’s heart belongs to the pig. Every household seems to own a walk-in fridge where legs of jamón hang like dusty violins. Ask politely and you may be offered a sliver so thin the light shines through; it melts on the tongue leaving a taste of acorns and time.

Walking without a backpack full of emergency biscuits

You don’t need to be Chris Bonington to escape the streets. A signed path leaves the castle gate, contours along the ridge for twenty minutes, then drops into the Hozgarganta gorge where the river has carved swimming holes deep enough to dive. In late May the water is still snow-melt from the sierra; locals treat it as a free cryotherapy session and climb out glowing. Take river shoes—stones are slippery with algae—and beware the territorial ducks.

Longer routes thread through the cork forest: six kilometres to the ruined railway viaduct at San Pablo, or twelve to the white village of Gaucín with views across to North Africa. Spring brings orchids and imperial eagles; autumn smells of fermenting chestnuts and drifting wood-smoke. The tourist office (open Tuesday and Thursday, mornings only) sells a hand-drawn map for €2 that is reassuringly easy to follow: one path, no junctions, no excuses.

British footprints and Spanish roots

Around ten percent of Jimena’s houses now belong to northern Europeans, mostly couples who arrived via Gibraltar airport and never drove back. They sit on the ayuntamiento’s foreign-residents’ committee, fund the Saturday cinema club, and organise the Christmas pantomime in the old cinema—yet they still queue with everyone else for the bread van that toots its horn at nine each morning. Integration is measured in small things: knowing that the butcher shuts on Thursday afternoon, remembering to greet the pharmacist before asking for paracetamol, accepting that the plumber will arrive “esta tarde” which could mean any time before dusk.

Children of these hybrid families attend the local primary school where lessons switch mid-sentence from Castilian to Andalusian dialect; by age eight most speak English, Spanish and the local whistle used by farmers to move goats across the valley. The arrangement works until GCSE choices loom, at which point many decamp to Sotogrande’s international schools, twenty-five minutes away and reassuringly expensive.

When to come, when to stay away

April and late-October are the sweet spots: mid-twenties by day, cool enough for a fleece after dark, and the castle is yours alone. In July the village fiesta crams five thousand people into streets designed for five hundred; flamenco bands play until four, processions block every alley, and the bakery runs out of bread by nine. It’s magnificent if you booked six months ahead; hell if you arrived with a rucksack and hoped to find a room.

Winter is quiet, sometimes too quiet. When the levante wind howls up the gorge, temperatures drop to single figures and the castle can be closed for “security” (loose stones plus gale). Bars still open, but they light the brasero under the table and wrap customers in blankets like elderly relatives. Bring a book, expect conversations rather than cocktails, and relish the moment when the barman remembers your name on day three.

Leave the car at the station if you’re rail-bound. The Algeciras-Granada line is one of Spain’s prettiest: viaducts, cork forest, occasional glimpses of griffon vultures cruising at eye-level. Trains are infrequent—four a day—so check the timetable or face a seven-kilometre trek uphill with your wheelie case. Taxis exist but must be booked; the number is painted on the station door and the driver answers on the third ring, usually with a television in the background.

Jimena will not change your life. It offers no Michelin stars, no infinity pools, no souvenir shops beyond a single shelf of olive-wood bowls. What it does give is a place where the bread is still warm at ten, the castle door remains unlatched, and the evening news is discussed in the plaza rather than on Twitter. Turn up, slow down, remember how villages smelled before diesel and detergent took over. If that sounds like enough, you’ll probably stay longer than planned.