Camino Mozárabe, Spain. Part 1: Almería to Granada

Travelling south to Almería (the start of our Camino Mozárabe) through provinces ruled by the Moors for 800 years. The landscape a dream. Windmills for tilting at, iconic black bulls silhouetted against the bright sky, stunted vines growing in the parched earth, trees white with blossom. The rugged, snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada. A shimmer of yellow wildflowers in the valley below. Tall slender poplars, bare of leaves. Islamic forts, cave dwellings, forsaken adobe villages and stations where the train no longer stops. Afternoon winds laden with red dust from the Sahara, making the skies hazy and the horizon blurred.

Layers of history, of dazzling and vanquished civilisations. Almería’s 10th-century Alcazaba is the largest Muslim fortress in Spain and a striking presence on the promontory overlooking the city and port. Muslims, Christians and Jews once lived here together in relative harmony. Then came the religious intolerance and cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition and the laying down of a darker legacy. There’s a memorial to the Jewish people deported from Almería to the hell of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. And a memoria democratica for the Republicans who resisted Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. On the streets, refugees keep an eye out for the police as they eke out a living, selling trinkets to tourists.

Our first sello (stamp) in our Credencial del Peregrino. Our first yellow arrow. Our first steps on a 600-kilometre journey along the ancient way that is the Camino Mozárabe. The Camino is named for the Mozarabs, Christians living in the Arabic kingdoms of the south of Spain who walked this way on pilgrimages to the holy city of Santiago de Compostela. We’ll follow in their footsteps, taking Roman roads, medieval paths and droving ways through the dramatic landscapes of Andalucía and the great Moorish cities of Granada and Córdoba before crossing into Extremadura and continuing as far as Mérida, the old Roman capital. There, the Camino Mozárabe meets the Via de la Plata from Sevilla and continues north to Santiago.

Almería to Granada (202 kilometres)

An indigo sky, the moon still bright, the palm trees glowing in the first light of day. Setting off from the Cathedral and following the waymarked route through town and on to a bar in Huércal de Almería for our first coffee of the day. Two televisions blaring. A steady coming and going of people, some fortifying themselves with a shot of liquor. The day warming, the breeze still cool. A perfect morning for walking into the unknown.

Our route takes us along medieval cañadas reales, paths still used for droving animals between the lowlands where they winter and the high pastures where they graze in summer. It’s possible these paths go back to Neolithic times and were etched out by hunters following the migratory tracks of wild animals. 

The archaeological remains of the once glorious Muslim city of Bayyana. The scent of orange blossom, figs starting to fruit, last season’s pomegranates still on the trees. Whitewashed houses built into the hillside for coolness during the searing summers. Long abandoned farms and spent mining country, rough barren hills where Westerns and, more recently, the Game of Thrones were shot. We miss a turn and follow the dusty, rocky bed of the Andarax River for longer than necessary. Our consolation is that we happen upon a friendly bar in Gador. There was once a Mozarabic monastery here; now a French circus is in town and there is piano accordion music wafting out of a yurt. On to Santa Fé de Mondujar and our first night in an Andalucían albergue, sharing it with just one other pilgrim, Gus, an Irish man from Cork walking his sixth Camino. He’s carrying weight and is haunted by demons but believes the Camino will be good for his being. “The body finds peace after a few days. Then the spirit. And finally the soul”. Dinner together at the Plaza Bar and the talk is of the Irish taking three generations to stand proud after the humiliation of colonisation, and of Brexit and its likely impact on the Irish Republic. It’s already bringing jobs to Dublin as London-based companies set up EU offices, but what of the Irish Republic/Northern Ireland border issue? Might the Troubles be rekindled?

A steep climb out of town through the dry, broken hills of the Sierra de Los Filabres. A scattering of snow on the high peaks. Views across the plains to Cabo de Gata and the sea. A flock of swifts. A sheepdog, warning us away from its flock. Pine forests, yellow broom and mimosa. Wildflowers and the scent of wild herbs. We meander from village to village, following the dry Nacimiento River. White square houses, date palms, orange groves and stone churches the colour of the earth. These villages were built by Moors seeking safety in the isolated hills after the conquering Catholic monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand, rode triumphantly into Granada in 1492. 

Signs cautioning drivers of deer on the road. The village of Alboloduy glowing white on the hillside; its medina a steep maze of houses decorated with flowering plants and brightly glazed tiles. Church bells ringing on the quarter-hour. By nightfall there are seven of us in the pilgrims’ Albergue high above the town, strangers to each other only for the brief time it takes us to fall into the habit of meeting at day’s end over a beer or a meal. Paco and Pachi, both Spanish; Chan, a Taiwanese American; Gerard, a gentle Frenchman; Peter from Germany; and we two Australians.

Farms where pretty goats are corralled for milking. Abandoned houses where people once lived harsh isolated lives. Wild lavender growing alongside the track. An Arabic cistern with a semicircular roof and shards of terracotta scattered about its entrance. More walking on the dry river bed, rough underfoot with stones and worn fragments of glazed tiles washed downstream by floodwaters. Wisteria cascading from terraces in the village of Nacimiento. Almond trees blossoming. A young girl stops to ask where we are from and what we are doing here. With a story secured she skips off home to tell of her encounter with the strangers from afar. 

Traversing the river valley between two mountain ranges. Entire villages forsaken and now derelict mounds of rubble. Humidity building all day, then, half an hour before the walk’s end, driving rain. Scurrying under a Roman bridge, past an 18th-century aqueduct and on through the storm to Alba and a festive welcome from the local Friends of the Camino Association. Cake and coffee and spirited conversation. The guttural accent of the Andalusians is mocked by Spaniards from the north, but Veronica, one of the Friends, defends it as a reflection of the richness of the Andalusian culture “in it you hear the centuries of Moorish influence, the Jewish way of speaking and Castilian Spanish”.

A posting in the Albergue logbook from a couple walking the Mozárabe with broken hearts after the death of their twenty-one-year-old son, Juan. He was hit and killed by a car in Palermo, Sicily.

Walking through villages where only the old remain. The Friends of the Camino hope that by encouraging people to walk the Mozárabe, the young will return to run hotels and bars catering to pilgrims and the villages will flourish. For now, the eerie silence that descended after the global financial crisis still haunts the valley. Old men shuffle out to the campo to cut kindling and keep their home fires burning. There’s heavy snow on the nearby Sierra Nevada and a cold wind blows down from its peaks. The track is scattered with the spent cartridges of last season’s hunting. 

Almond orchards, olive groves and small fields of wheat. The fortress hill town of Fiñana with its mosque and cistern and Huéneja whose walls are said to be ‘whitewashed with lime and with history’. Old men playing dominoes, a tinker selling his wares, a gathering of pilgrims at the one bar in town. Only Gus, the initially gregarious Irishman, sits apart and keeps his own counsel.

Early morning; the moon pale, the snow pink. Birds on song. Men in the small bar in Dólar have the broken smiles of the poor. We walk towards La Calahorra with Monte Chullo, a snow-covered, 2,611-metre high beauty, watching over us. In the other direction is an imposing Italian Renaissance castle. Once an Arabic fort, the first Marquis of Zenete, son of Cardenal Mendoza, turned it into a lavish palace in the early 16th century. In its shadow, a local sculptor has fashioned a fantastical take on Antony Gormley’s ‘Angel of the North’.

The scarred landscape that is the old open-pit iron ore mine outside of Alquife, its monumental equipment rusting, its buildings largely derelict except for a freshly painted office block and a patch of well-tended lawn. The snow that was forecast comes in flurries.

Ice on the ground and zero degrees this fine, razor-sharp morning. A Spanish lesson at the farmers market in Jerez del Marquesado. Artichokes, aubergines, cucumbers, leeks. A plethora of peppers. Wild mountain thyme. An art installation in the pine forest. Smoke rising from the fires lit by farmers to burn their olive tree prunings. At Cogollos de Guadix the bells of the Mudejar church toll a sombre lament for a recently deceased parishioner. Birds flee from the bell tower. The baroque altarpiece, a fanciful work of whimsy decorated with endless cherubs, creates a somewhat incongruous feature at a funeral. 

All afternoon the scent of almond blossom, the wind taking the petals and scattering them. The lower river valley carpeted with violet and cream wildflowers. 

On through the area known as the badlands. The lake bed dug up, the hills flattened, ill-shaped mounds created. The dust swirling. The wind, stiffening and against us. Birds nesting high up in the bare trees. The first of the Gaudi-like cave dwellings of Guadix, one of them our home for the evening. In town, there’s an 11th-century Islamic castle, a Jewish quarter, a Castilian plaza, a recently discovered Roman theatre and an impressive sandstone cathedral. Built on the site of a mosque and an earlier Hispano-Visigothic church, its architecture reflects the succession of gothic, renaissance and baroque influences during its 200 years of construction.

Freshly fallen snow on the sierras. The wind gusting. The clouds racing. Ice and snow flurries. Walking up through the pine forests we fall into the same rhythm as Paco. So begins a custom of walking together and a friendship. A rich, delicious hot chocolate at the spa town of Gaena and then a precipitous climb through a landscape of broken red hills and gorges. On to the old Moorish town of La Peza, old stone farms set amongst the houses, horses and donkeys tethered, the steep narrow streets a challenge for the old and infirm.

Another lively night in a Spanish bar. Another football match on TV (Real Madrid vs Juventus). A welcome from the town’s mayor who tells us that while La Peza hasn’t had snow for twelve years, this year there’s so much that the ski season is being extended by at least a month.

High up into the sierras today, ice by the edge of the track. Snow falling. Then rainbows arching brightly across the storm bruised sky. Oak forests, wild rosemary, heather in bloom. Range upon range of mystical, mist-shrouded mountains. The valleys below radiating light. Snow lying on the ground all afternoon. Fresh ibex tracks. Pine trees, dark against the snow. Soft snow grasses. The promise of great natural beauty drew us to this high route across the mountains and we’re not disappointed. The landscape is sublime, the deep silence calming. 

After such beauty, the grey desolate moonscape of the abandoned La Unica quarry is an assault. Only the snow and the ice covering the ravaged earth lessen the blow.

Cowbells clanging from across the valley as we walk down out of the mountains, past farms and olive groves into the small village of Quentar. Rain falling in torrents. Caught between our guesthouse and the bar, a woman shelters us in her basement. The rain doesn’t ease so she lends us umbrellas. The next morning we leave them by her front door with a note of thanks. The mist rising and the sun shining as we walk into a land of terraced hillsides and along the edge of the crumbling, but still impressive, French canal built in the late 19th century to carry water to the farms along the Darro River. The snow is brilliantly white on the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada.

A once-grand, now abandoned, Jesuit monastery. Ransacked in the civil war, its monks were forced to flee and they never returned. Locals out foraging for wild asparagus. Small bright yellow butterflies. A herd of wild horses on a narrow overgrown track alongside the river. They are uncertain about us and we are even more uncertain about them. Continuing downstream, through the Sacromonte district (the old Romany quarter), past the Abbey and into the glittering city that is Granada. The Alhambra and the Cathedral glow magnificently in the sun.

We were in Granada less than two weeks ago, as tourists taking in the spectacle that is Semana Santa (Holy Week). We beheld processions and rituals more extraordinary than we imagined. Floats adorned with medieval statues, flowers and candles. The heady scent of incense, orange blossom and beeswax wafting through the night air. The penitents in robes, their faces concealed by eerie conical hats. Las manolas, proud women in black velvet dresses and black lace mantillas worn high on the back of their heads. Marching bands of trumpeters and drummers. Priests and generals and local dignitaries. The chant of the crowd when a float carrying the Virgin of the Aurora passes by: “Aurora, Aurora, guapa, guapa, guapa”. The haunting lament of a flamenco singer at midnight at the entrance of a hilltop church. At 3 pm on Good Friday solemn bells ring out and all of Granada falls silent. On Easter Sunday it is all lightness and joy. Rose petals rain down on the parade of hundreds of children ringing clay bells.

Paco, who we’ve walked with these past three days, is spending the weekend in Granada. We’re walking on towards Córdoba. We say hasta luego, hopeful of seeing each other again further down the track. Spending time together. Taking a different path. Meeting up again. The Camino Waltz as Gerard the French pilgrim calls it.

This is the first of a three-part series on walking the Camino Mozarábe. Click here for Part 2 and here for Part 3.

For more information about this  less-travelled Camino see our article Walking the Camino Mozaraé: 5 things you need to know.