Los Blázquez

A village that starts where the tarmac ends

Los Blázquez sits 620 metres above sea level on the first wrinkles of the Sierra Morena, eighty kilometres north-west of Córdoba. The A-4 motorway spits you out at Espiel; from there the road narrows, climbs and starts to corkscrew. Holm oaks replace olive groves, the temperature drops three degrees, and suddenly the valley floor looks a long way down. Mobile reception flickers out around kilometre twelve—download offline maps before you leave the petrol station at Pedro Abad, the last one for twenty minutes in any direction.

The village itself is not pretty in the postcard sense. Low, whitewashed houses spread either side of a single main street, interrupted by the occasional brick bungalow erected when someone had a windfall. A single church tower, plain and square, marks the centre; everything else is dehesa—open oak pasture that stretches until it meets the sky. Cattle grids outnumber zebra crossings, and the loudest noise at 10 a.m. is usually a tractor reversing into the co-op to unload grain.

Walking without way-markers

There are no signed footpaths, no ticket booths, no gift shop. What you get is a lattice of farm tracks that fan out from the last streetlamp. Locals will point you towards the Loma de la Cruz, a thirty-minute stiff haul up a stony track that ends at a rough stone cross. The reward is a 270-degree view over the Guadiato basin: a rumpled carpet of green in April, parched bronze by late July. Take water—there’s no bar at the top, and summer shade is limited to whatever cloud drifts across the sun.

If you want a longer circuit, continue along the ridge until the track drops into an abandoned quarry. The return loops past Cortijo del Cura, a crumbling farmhouse where a colony of lesser kestrels nests under the rafters each spring. Binoculars are useful; the birds don’t perform on command, but they’re more reliable than the wild boar that leave hoof-prints everywhere yet vanish at the first crunch of gravel.

Winter walks have their own rules. Night frosts glaze the puddles, and north winds whistle across the plateau. Setting off after 9 a.m. is sensible—temperatures can sit below five degrees until the sun clears the ridge, and mud turns to grease on north-facing slopes. On the plus side, you’ll have the trail to yourself except for the odd shepherd on a quad bike who will raise a hand in silent greeting.

One bar, one menu, no hurry

Bar Restaurante Jesús opens at seven for coffee and closes when the last customer leaves—sometimes midnight, sometimes earlier if Tuesday feels like Monday. There’s no written menu; owner Jesús recites what his wife has cooked today. Migas dominate in winter: fried breadcrumbs softened with water, flecked with chorizo and grapes. It sounds eccentric to British tastes, yet works like a savoury bread-and-butter pudding. In late spring the star is presa ibérica, a shoulder cut from black-footed pigs that grazed the surrounding oaks. Expect a slab the size of a small steak, properly pink, served with home-cut chips instead of the stodgy beans you feared. Price: €9–€12 a plate, cash only—there’s no card machine and no ATM in the village.

Drink order: tinto de verano, equal parts red wine and Casera lemonade, served over ice. It’s what the builders are drinking at the next table, and at roughly 5% ABV you can still drive afterwards. If you insist on Rioja, Jesús keeps one bottle for funerals and will look faintly worried when you ask.

Monday is market day. Six stalls set up on the concrete plaza: socks, cheap melons, and a van hawking cheese made twenty kilometres away. It’s the only morning the bar runs out of tables, so arrive before eleven or after the livestock auction finishes at one.

When the village remembers it’s Spanish

Fiestas are short, intense and largely spontaneous. The patronales begin 15 August—what happens depends on who has returned from Barcelona or Madrid that year. Recent programmes have included a foam party in the polideportivo, a tractor-decorating contest, and mass at 9 p.m. followed by a free paella for anyone holding a plastic plate. Visitors are welcome but not announced; if you’re obviously foreign, someone will press a beer into your hand and explain the rules of the nightly bingo. Accommodation within the village is impossible—every spare room is already full of cousins. Book a rural house in nearby Villanueva del Rey (25 min) or resign yourself to driving back to the Córdoba ring road afterwards.

Semana Santa is the opposite: subdued, almost private. The single procession leaves the church at dusk on Good Friday, twenty men in hooded robes carrying a modest Virgin while a trumpet plays a slow march that echoes off the steel shutter of the closed supermarket. Spectators stand in silence; cameras feel intrusive. By ten the floats are back inside, the streetlights blink off, and the village returns to crickets and the clink of dog collars.

Getting there, getting out

Public transport exists but feels theoretical. One weekday bus leaves Córdoba at 13:30, reaches Los Blázquez at 14:45, and turns around at 17:30. That gives you 170 minutes—enough for lunch and a lap of the streets, not enough for the ridge walk. Saturday and Sunday there’s nothing unless you count the delivery van that will sometimes take passengers if you ask nicely at the co-op.

Driving remains the only practical option. From the UK, fly to Málaga or Seville, pick up a hire car, and allow two hours after baggage reclaim. The final fifteen kilometres twist; if you’re prone to car-sickness, let someone else drive and focus on the griffon vultures overhead. Parking is wherever you find shade—there are no meters, no clamps, and remarkably few spaces because nobody expected visitors.

Fill the tank before you arrive. The nearest fuel is back on the A-4, a forty-minute round trip that feels longer when the fuel light starts to scold. Equally important: download Spotify. FM radio fades to static halfway up the mountain, and the village soundtrack is mostly dogs and distant chainsaws.

The honest verdict

Los Blázquez will not change your life. It offers no souvenir magnets, no infinity-pool villas, no flamenco tablaos. What it does offer is a slice of inland Spain that package tours skipped—an agricultural rhythm measured by rainfall and pig prices rather than cruise-ship schedules. Come if you want to walk under holm oaks without meeting another hiker, eat pork that grazed within sight of your table, and practise Spanish with people who have time to talk back. Treat it as a pause between cities rather than a destination in itself, and leave before you start resenting the fact that the bar shuts on random Thursdays. One night is plenty; two if the weather is perfect and you remembered to bring cash.