Cañar

The first turn-off as you drive up the Carretera de la Sierra, is that of the village of Cañar, to me the remotest village in the area. Until a few years ago the winding road (about 23 hairpin bends) leading up to it was not asphalted and a trip to Cañar was, to say the least, a mini adventure.

I first came upon this village in 1993 after a visit Ole had organized for Michael and I to the Buddhist monastry, O sel ling, followed by a barbecue in the picnic area of Puente Palo. Puente Palo is situated in the National Park of Sierra Nevada at an altitude of over 1700m. It is there, with the sound of flowing water, the rustling of chestnut leaves and the aroma of pine needles, that you feel you truly are breathing the purest, cleanest and healthiest air in Europe.


The drive we took down to the village seemed so hazardous that it was easy for us to take Ole's comment about its inhabitants having forgotten that the Moors had long departed, as God's truth.

Cañar still keeps a lot of its Arabic heritage, essentially its physiognomy of narrow streets and white-washed, flat-roofed houses as well as its farming methods and acequias irrigation system. Muslim remains have been found in the mill known as Molino de Ramblero. Its parish church (Santa Ana), that to date has not been reformed, was built over what was a Nazari mosque in around 1775.

La Alpujarra had been so poor, that in the 1950s most of the young migrated North in search of jobs and those that stayed behind farmed the land and bartered. Very little money ever changed hands. Cañar was no exception.

The first time Ole and his pretty wife visited Cañar in the early seventies, they arrived around lunchtime on a cool Autumn's day. They headed, as one does, to the bar for a meal. As they entered, everyone stopped talking to stare at this slight, northern lady. They were all men.

Service was courteous and they had the best "Potaje de Castañas" ever. In time, they learnt that in Cañar women didn't go into the bar. However urgently a woman needed to call her husband, she wouldn't send her daughter for him, she would only send her son and if she didn't have one, she would borrow her neighbour's!

That Sunday, some twenty years later, no-one seemed shocked nor even surprised to see me enter that same bar. We did notice, however, the absence of women. They were attending the Sunday service. Men in Cañar didn't and don't often go to church, instead they wait for their mujeres either outside in the square or in the bar, just opposite.

The story goes that once, the vicar of the time refused to permit the burial of a certain "Cañarete" in the Catholic graveyard since he had never attended church. The desperate vicar was unceremoniously carried to the edge of the village and almost thrown off the cliff. Needless to say, he was speedily replaced.

There are now a few foreign families living in Cañar, but it remains essentially a very Spanish, very Andaluz village. Its fiestas, are very traditional and well attended by those who had migrated North all those years ago and their descendants. Very few sell their houses in the village. My friends who live there tell me it is like one big family...and that language is never an issue.

Cañar is an ideal place to start walks and is a haven for lovers of wildlife, botanists or just those seeking fresh clean air and magical views that extend to the Mediterranean and beyond it to the Rif mountains of Morocco.






Photo 1, Cañar by June Slatter
Phtot 2, Cañar landscape by Etienne Campe
Photo 3, Cañar in snow by Robin Smith
Photo 4, The Goat herd by Mike Slatter
Photo 5, Language is no barrier courtesy of Mike & June Slatter
Photo 6, Water colour of Fiesta del Carnaval by Mike Slatter
Photo 7, Beli After the Meal courtesy of Mike & June Slatter