Hotel Alquería de Morayma

Location

Carretera A-348 Alpujarra, Cádiar, 18440

The village of Yegen is part of the municipality (local council administrative district) of Alpujarra de la Sierra which also includes the villages of Mecina Bombarón and Golco and the tiny hamlet of Montenegro. Mecina Bombarón was the home base of the King Abén Aboó, leader of the second Alpujarra rebellion and the last Moorish monarch to remain on Spanish soil. He was assassinated in 1571 when Phillip II brought to an end any further moorish revolt. Also in Mecina there is the supposed Puente Romano (Roman bridge) that crosses the river Mecina below the main road and forms part of the ancient 'Camino Real' that linked Almería with Granada. In Montenegro there is the delightful natural spring "The Gypsy's Leap' and a pretty capilla devoted to the Virgin Fátima. Golco contains one of the oldest churches in the region built on the foundations of an erstwhile mosque whose architectural features include rare examples of vaulting and plaster work. YEGEN is internationally well known as the first Spanish home of the English writer and hispanist Gerald Brenan; and is the subject of his most famous book 'South from Granada' which considers the culture, anthropology and history of the village as much as the author's personal history of his stay there. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy is the most recent Brenan biographer. He says that for Brenan, YEGEN was his 'desert island'. "From this vast view of mountains, valleys, villages and distant sea lay spread out like an illustration of the features of the world in a child's geography book. Behind the house the mountain rose gently in a succession of cultivated terraces, while immediately at my feet lay the village, sliding down the slope, an agglomeration of grey rectangular surfaces that from where I stood looked like a Cubist picture by Braque. And now the sun was setting. The goats and the cattle were being driven home, the voices of the men and women calling to one another lay like long streamers in the air, the white pigeons were circling…………I became aware of a sweet aromatic smell…………every one of those flat grey roofs……………..and from each of these chimneys issued a plume of grey smoke. The women were cooking their suppers and for fuel they used bushes of rosemary, thyme and lavender, which were brought in on donkeys' backs from the hills close by."