Miraculous Mijas

The description in the tourist brochure said that we would be charmed by the little village of Mijas (pronounced MEE-hass). The language in such brochures is almost always exaggerated, but this time they got it right. Mijas is a tiny village perched on the side of a mountain, overlooking the blue Mediterranean, and winning the hearts of anyone willing to take the twelve-mile trip up the mountain from Málaga.

Every house here is white; every building, old or new, is required to have the same exterior design features, and the result is dazzling.

Traditionally Mijas was just a little farming village with more donkeys than people. There are still donkeys here, but they are no longer used as beasts of burden. With a smile and a wink, the town government assigns each donkey a taxicab number and they haul small carts holding a pair of tourists.

Nowadays the major industry is tourism, but Mijas has not been “discovered” yet. You can still buy a house here for half of what it would cost in North Carolina, and the views of the coastline from these mountains is breathtaking. Mijas looks to me like Malibu must have looked at the turn of the twentieth century.

Residents walk to the one local grocery store. They worship in a Catholic church occupying a building once used as a Moorish Mosque, and before that as a Visigothic monophysite Christian Church, and before that as a Roman temple dedicated to their pantheon, and before that as a Phoenician temple dedicated to Baal-marduk, and before that as an Iberian shrine dedicated to their animistic deities, and before that (I’m guessing) as a prehistoric shrine to whatever the residents regarded as divine. The building was built, rebuilt, enlarged and remodeled on the same spot. I am suggesting that ever since there have been human beings, they have worshipped here.

Our guide had an interesting take on the sanctity of the site. She said, “I don’t know if the ancient religions were right or wrong, but I do know that this is a holy place, and since we’re Catholics now, this is where we worship. This is a sacred place. There is holy energy here.”

We also visited a cave with a shrine inside dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but again we were told that this grotto has been considered a sacred site for millennia before written records catalogued it.

As if I were not already convinced that Mijas is the closest place on earth to heaven, our guide took us to a place I consider at least semi-divine—a chocolate factory. We sampled not only milk chocolate, but also an unsweetened chocolate flavored with pepper and fruit, a white chocolate flavored with coffee, and a bon-bon filled with caramel—all washed down with a delicious Spanish tempranillo wine.

Depending on the airfare you pay, one could probably fly to Spain and spend a week here for as little as one pays for a week at Myrtle Beach. I know without a doubt which vacation I would prefer.Read more