Mecina: Fondales

We made a Wikiloc track for the historic elements in the village of Fondales today, and returned home to a special treat. Our neighbor had invited us to visit the box of three-week-old kittens on his patio. The mother cat has been visiting us every day, so it was delightful to meet her kittens.

Fondales is notable for many reasons. It is the lowest of La Taha’s villages, and was the summer home of writer Gerald Brenan after he moved out of Yegen. (Although given how hot it was there today, and it’s only May, I’m not sure why he didn’t choose one of the higher villages.)

A particularly striking corner of Fondales is the winding and long Zacatín alley-adarve. This was the place where the weavers were based. In the 11th and 12th centuries, Alpujarra silk was considered to be the highest quality in the world. It’s hard to reconcile this fact with the sleepy aspect of places like Fondales today, but silk constituted the primary export of the Nasrid Emirate of Granada.

The best quality silk came from silkworms fed with black mulberry leaves. A silkworm cocoon can yield a single thread more than 900 meters long!

Despite the expulsion of the Moors, the cultivation of mulberries and the production of silk thread continued in the Alpujarra until the 1950s. On a previous trip, Ned and I stayed with a woman who remembered gathering mulberry leaves for the silkworms that were raised in the top floor open-air room where we were then sleeping! Her father and aunt were weavers, and she showed us their looms.

I was a bit wistful looking out at the drop-off below Fondales where the land falls away to the canyon of the RīoTrevélez. The river is crossed by a medieval footbridge. I had hoped for many years to make this crossing, climb up the steep trail on the other side, and then descend the narrow switchbacks on the GR 142 to Chris Stewart’s El Valero, but more than 2000 meters of elevation gain and loss there and back is far more than I can tackle at this point. So I am happy to have at least seen it, and to feel immersed in its atmosphere and history.

Read more