Pegalajar

The Sound of Water in a Dry Land

Eight hundred metres above sea level, Pegalajar's streets climb so steeply that locals joke about needing mountain legs just to post a letter. The reward for the calf-burning ascent comes in snatches: a glimpse through wrought-iron bars into somebody's courtyard, the sudden hush when a motorbike disappears round a corner, and always, if you listen, the faint trickle of water.

This is what makes the village unusual for inland Jaén province. While most hill towns depend solely on winter rain, Pegalajar sits on limestone riddled with springs. The Fuente de la Reja, a stone trough fed by a natural spout, still draws grandmothers who fill plastic bottles for the week's drinking water. When the flow is strong, children race paper boats along the channel that runs beside Calle Real. During drought summers the channel runs dry, but even then the stone trough remains the village's natural meeting point – proof that water here carries more weight than mere hydration.

White Walls and Arab Tiles

The old centre measures barely four streets by three, yet walking it takes longer than you'd expect. Every corner demands a pause: to admire a 16th-century coat-of-arms wedged between modern satellite dishes, to let a delivery van squeeze past with millimetres to spare, or simply to work out which alley is the street and which somebody's front steps. Houses painted white with oxblood-red trim glow amber at sunset, a colour scheme unchanged since Moorish builders mixed local clay into their lime wash.

The climb ends at the sixteenth-century church of Nuestra Señora de la Consolación, its tower acting as both compass point and weather vane for the village. Stand beside the west door at dusk and you'll see why: olive terraces fan out below like green lava, stopping only where the Sierra Mágina massif rears up, its highest peak still tipped with snow into April. This is one of Spain's last truly dark-sky areas – on moonless nights the Milky Way appears close enough to snag on the cactus spines that sprout from rooftop planters.

Eating in the Mountains

Pegalajar's restaurants don't court tourists, which partly explains why a three-course lunch with wine still costs under €12. Casa Antonio keeps a chalkboard list that changes according to whatever looked good at Jaén market that morning. Order the migas – fried breadcrumbs strewn with garlic, grapes and thin shards of jamón – and the owner will insist on finishing the dish tableside with a splash of local olive oil so fragrant it makes supermarket versions taste like motor lubricant.

Vegetarians usually fare better in Andalusia than reputation suggests, and here the standby is espinacas con garbanzos, spinach wilted with cumin and paprika until it tastes almost meaty. Children refusing foreign food get a simply grilled chicken breast and, rare for rural Spain, proper chips rather than the customary fried eggs. Finish with a rosco de Pegalajar, an anise-scented biscuit the texture of soft biscotti, best dunked in thick Arab-style coffee that arrives in glasses, not cups.

Sunday lunch remains sacred. Arrive after 3.30 pm and you'll find grills scrubbed clean, chairs stacked and television bullfighting replacing customers. Picnic instead beside the Charca, a natural pool ten minutes' drive above the village where locals swim free among dragonflies and terrapins. British motor-homers prize the signed aire here – free, level, and blissfully quiet after the coast's €25-a-night campsites.

When the Sirens Sound

Market day is Tuesday, when the travelling fish van from Granada brings the sea 120 kilometres inland. Old women inspect glistening hake with the concentration of diamond dealers, and teenagers queue for €1 churros thick as baseball bats. But the real weekly ritual happens every first Wednesday at noon when civil-defence sirens wail for the monthly earthquake drill. Pegalajar straddles a minor fault line; locals shrug, visitors sometimes flinch. The last serious tremor was 1951, though tiny shocks roll through every few years, just enough to rattle the bottles behind the bar.

Summer fiestas start 15 August with the procession of the Virgen de la Consolación borne through streets carpeted in rosemary branches. What begins as solemn devotion ends, inevitably, with foam parties in the municipal sports hall and fireworks that echo off the mountain like artillery. September brings the Romería del Cuadro, when half the village treks four kilometres to a woodland shrine, returning at dawn behind brass bands and tractors decked in tissue-paper flowers. Book accommodation early if your trip coincides – every spare room fills with cousins from Jaén city, and even the aire overflows with campervans.

Walking into Thin Air

Hiking options start directly from the top of Calle Carrera. The Sendero de los Manantiales, a two-hour loop signed with blue droplets, threads past allotment gardens where pensioners grow broad beans on slopes so vertical they harvest roped to trees. Further up, the path passes ruined watermills, their millstones cracked by frost and forgotten after mains plumbing arrived in the 1970s. Information panels explain how Arab engineers channelled spring water through stone aqueducts still visible among undergrowth – a reminder that rural Spain's apparent timelessness is actually constant adaptation.

Serious walkers continue to the 2,167-metre summit of Pico Mágina, highest point in the province. Allow five hours return and carry more water than you think necessary; the trail climbs 1,300 metres, temperatures drop ten degrees, and sudden mists can erase the path within minutes. Winter hikers sometimes find the final kilometre glazed with verglas – locals recount, only half-joking, how British tourists in trainers have to be half-carried down by Guardia Civil patrols.

Getting There, Getting Out

From Málaga or Granada the fastest route is the A-44 to junction 50, then 25 kilometres of ever-tightening bends. The final four kilometres switchback so aggressively that rental-car occupants develop synchronised swaying techniques. Coaches can't make the turns, which is why Pegalajar remains mercifully free of day-tripping hordes. Parking on the upper streets is sized for a 1980s SEAT; leave anything larger in the signed lot by the cemetery and walk the last five minutes downhill.

The village makes a practical base for exploring UNESCO-listed Úbeda and Baeza twenty minutes north, or for Granada's Alhambra forty minutes south, though you might find yourself inventing excuses to stay put: one more coffee in the plaza, another climb to watch sunlight creep across a million olive trees, a final swim in the Charca before the mountain night closes in.

Come late October when the first rains swell the springs, the air smells of wet limestone and woodsmoke, and the olive harvest begins with the metallic chirrup of mechanical shakers. This is Pegalajar at its most honest – neither postcard-perfect nor wilfully quaint, simply a working village where the mountain meets the plain and water still dictates the rhythm of the day.