Rojales

The Thursday market starts at eight, but the British pensioners arrive earlier. By half past seven they're queuing for bacon butties outside the café next to the river Segura, swapping tips on where to find proper cheddar and discussing the previous night's Coronation Street. This is Rojales in 2024: a Costa Blanca town where Spanish grandmothers buy broccoli from the same stall as expats haggling over sun hats in broad Yorkshire accents.

Seventeen thousand people live within the municipal boundaries, though you wouldn't guess it from the historic centre. The old village proper houses barely five thousand souls, while the rest occupy a sprawling patchwork of urbanisations that have swallowed former citrus groves. Ciudad Quesada, the largest development, feels like Surrey with sunshine: detached villas with kidney-shaped pools, satellite dishes tuned to Sky Sports, and garden centres selling John Innes compost at four euros a bag.

Yet the heart of Rojales still beats to a Mediterranean rhythm. The 18th-century church of San Pedro Apóstol dominates the main square, its neoclassical façade glowing amber in the evening light. Inside, elderly locals mutter responses to the priest's liturgy while outside, the bars serve tapas that haven't changed in decades: montaditos of salt cod, plates of oily anchovies, glasses of rough red wine that costs €1.20 and tastes like liquid sunshine.

The caves that became galleries

Up the hill from the church, Calle Opalo climbs past houses that cling to the sandstone escarpment. Here you'll find the Cuevas del Rodeo, a neighbourhood scooped from limestone during the 18th century. Forty cave dwellings honeycomb the cliff face, their whitewashed chimneys poking from the rock like punctuation marks. Families lived here until the 1950s, keeping goats in the lower chambers and drying peppers from the ceilings. Today artists occupy the caves, turning former bedrooms into studios where they sell pottery and paintings to visitors who've struggled up the steep lanes.

The views repay the effort. From the highest caves you can trace the Segura's muddy course through a patchwork of allotments where farmers still channel irrigation water through Moorish channels. Orange groves stretch towards the distant glitter of the Mediterranean, ten kilometres away as the crow flies but twenty minutes by car along the CV-905. Guardamar's beach provides Rojales' seaside fix: a seven-kilometre sweep of pale sand backed by pine woods where Spanish families picnic on Sundays and British walkers stride purposefully, clocking up their ten thousand steps before lunch.

Rice, rugby and rock-bottom prices

Food here caters to two audiences. On Plaza de la Constitución, Casa Pedro serves proper Spanish cooking to locals who've been coming for three generations. Try the arroz con costra, a rice dish baked with chorizo and pork until it develops a crusty top, or the pencas de acelga rellenas, chard stalks stuffed with meat and pine nuts. A three-course lunch menu costs €12 including wine, though you'll need decent Spanish because Pedro's English extends to "hello" and "thank you".

Five minutes away, Harry's Bar offers steak nights and all-you-can-eat curry Wednesdays. The chalkboard advertises proper pies, chips with curry sauce, and pints of Budweiser for €1.50 during happy hour. British newspapers lie scattered on tables, the television shows Sky Sports, and on Saturday afternoons the commentary drifts between English and Spanish as regulars debate whether Leeds will ever return to the Premier League.

This cultural collision extends to entertainment. The Thursday market becomes a social event where expats compare vitamin supplements while their Spanish counterparts stock up on cheap underwear. Evening options range from flamenco at the cultural centre (third Friday each month, €5 donation) to karaoke at The Black Bull where pensioners belt out Sweet Caroline until the early hours. August amplifies everything: the annual fiesta features a pyrotechnic display called the cordà where fireworks cascade through the streets, and the Irish bars stay open until four serving €2 pints to revellers who've forgotten which country they're in.

Practical realities

Rojales works best with wheels. The bus service to Guardamar runs twice daily except Sundays, when it doesn't run at all. Taxis from Alicante airport cost €45 if you book in advance, more if the driver mistakes your urbanisation for one with a similar name. Car hire starts at €25 daily in winter, doubling during Easter and August when the population swells with holiday homeowners escaping British rain.

Accommodation divides cleanly between old and new. The three-star Hotel La Laguna sits beside the river, its balconies overlooking allotments where farmers tend tomatoes at dawn. Rooms cost €65 nightly including breakfast, though light sleepers should request the rear face away from the CV-905. Alternatively, Airbnb lists hundreds of villas with pools from €80 per night, though check the map carefully: some "Rojales" properties actually sit in neighbouring Benijófar, adding twenty minutes to your walk for morning coffee.

Weather follows Costa Blanca patterns: glorious from March to June, furnace-hot during July and August when temperatures hit 38°C, pleasantly warm in autumn when the agricultural fields glow with ripening persimmons. Winter brings occasional flooding when the Segura bursts its banks; January 2020 saw the main road underwater for three days, though locals treated it as an extended holiday and the bars did record trade.

The honesty check

Rojales won't suit purists seeking untouched Spain. The British presence dominates: estate agents advertise in pounds sterling, supermarkets stock Marmite and Tetley tea bags, and on some streets you'll hear more English than Spanish. The historic centre remains authentically Spanish but occupies perhaps fifteen minutes of wandering before you've seen the church, the caves and the museum of agriculture (free entry, closes for siesta 2-5pm).

Yet this hybrid quality forms part of the appeal. Where else can you breakfast on proper bacon, buy sun-dried tomatoes from the farmer who grew them, then spend the afternoon on a beach that stretches empty except for your footprints? Rojales offers the practical comforts of home wrapped in Valencian sunshine, served with rice dishes that taste like holidays used to before everything became Instagrammed. Just remember to bring a car, learn a few Spanish phrases for the market, and accept that the Thursday morning traffic jam consists entirely of British pensioners who've been coming for twenty years and have no intention of stopping now.