250px, Bridge over the Río Poqueira The Poqueira is a

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

in La Alpujarra region in the province of

Granada Granada ( ; ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence ...

, in

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. It is formed by the confluence of streams that rise near the summit of

Mulhacén Mulhacén (), with an elevation of , is the highest mountain in peninsular Spain and in all of the Iberian Peninsula. It is part of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada range in the Penibaetic System. It is named after Abu'l-Hasan Ali of Gra ...

, the highest peak of the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

mountains. The river cuts through a dramatic gorge, then joins the Río Trevélez shortly before flowing into the

Río Guadalfeo The Guadalfeo is a small river in the province of Granada, Spain, between the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada mountain range and the coastal ranges of Sierra de la Contraviesa and Lújar. Geography It stands on the southwestern side of t ...

. Near the confluence there is a hydro-electric station, with the associated abandoned settlement of La Cebadilla, built to house the workers. At Pampaneira, near the bridge by which the main road from Órgiva and

Lanjarón Lanjarón () is a municipality and town in the Alpujarras area in the province of Granada in Andalusia, Spain. Lanjarón has a ruined castle and chalybeate baths. This spa town is most famous, however, for its eponymous bottled water company, t ...

crosses the river, there is another hydro-electric installation, and just before the Poqueira river joins the Trevélez, at the narrowest point, there is a third - deep in the gorge and invisible from above. High on the eastern side lie the villages of Capileira, Bubión and Pampaneira which have become noted touristic attractions: they are of Moorish origin, with narrow, winding streets, flat roofs, characteristic chimney-pots... On the hillsides the terraces created by the Moors can still be seen, though now they mostly lie uncultivated, and the channels also built by the Moors still bring water to the villages and terraces. The higher part of the valley lies within the

National Park, the lower part within a Natural Park; and the valley with its villages has been declared a "Conjunto Historico". The Poqueira valley was the scene of the first major battle in the second "Morisco" rebellion, in January 1569. During the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

of 1936-39, the villages remained under Nationalist control, though Republican guerrilla fighters controlled the heights of the Sierra Nevada, and the frontier during most of the war lay just above the villages.

Bibliography

*''Bubión - the story of an Alpujarran village'', by Michael Tracy (Hermitage Books, 2013, ). Follow-up comments of the author are found at https://web.archive.org/web/20130516195101/http://alpujarrabubion.net/ (retrieved 2014-08-18). *''Bubión en el centro del Poqueira'', by Juan Pérez Ramón (2011). *''Capileira de Poqueira'', by Miguel Estévez Callejon (1995). *''Pampaneira en la Alpujarra'', by Tomás Martín Cifuentes (2009).

Bibliography

See also