Spain has begun easing its lockdown, and I find I’m thinking about the Axarquía. A lot.
I last went in February. A friend is writing a book about a spy and has a contact down there, and as I know the area well, he asked me to show him around.
It turns out there’s quite a nest of spooks and spooky people in the area. I’m not surprised. It’s a beautiful place of mountains, deep valleys, white villages and groves of olive and almond trees. The Axarquía (pronounced Ash-ah-KEE-ah) derives from the old Moorish word šarqiyya, meaning eastern region – in this case east of Málaga. Those old spies like a good east-west divide. West of Málaga are Marbella, Torremolinos, Ronda, golf courses, bars and ceramics shops; east is a quieter, less-developed, secret land.
To expose the Axarquía to proper scrutiny, I took my friend up to the white village I know best: Comares. At over 700 metres above sea level, it’s reached via a slaloming alpine road (which was briefly featured at the end of Coogan and Brydon’s Trip to Spain: that’s as much fame as the Axarquía has enjoyed, apart from the occasional segment in A Place in the Sun).
We stood at the village summit, where Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans and Arabs once surveyed their territory, near the ant-hilly structure which is all that remains of the fort. The panorama below is a landscape painter’s dream: clouds and light scudding across the Sierra Tejeda, topped with peaks of pale-grey limestone; oaks, olive trees and dots of white buildings punctuating layer upon layer of hills, lakes and lonely roads. It’s my favourite view in the world.
Villages like Comares are secrets too well-kept. Yoga retreats, mountain restaurants and art shops open and close – the tourism business here is as precarious as the cliffs on which the village is perched. And the population is shrinking: there are fewer old men sitting on the bench outside Bar La Plaza, fewer widows tending their potted plants and calling “Mira! Mira!” as they try to sell you their almonds and honey.
The local authorities have a talent for raising money for capital projects: every year there seem to be new paths and viewpoints. Entrance to the village is by a monumental recreation of the old town gates. But only a few adventurous northern Europeans and super-fit cyclists seem to pass beneath it at the best of times. And these times are the worst seen since the civil war.
The overtouristed places like Barcelona and Lisbon are having a breather right now. But the Axarquía needs the oxygen of tourism if it’s to stay anything like healthy. I need to go back and buy some almonds. Urgently.
