Las Alpujarras or La Alpujarra is a spectacularly beautiful region, dominated by the Sierra Nevada and straddling the provinces of Granada and Almeria. Its mountains, dotted with picturesque villages, are so impenetrable that the Moors who had named it managed to hold out there for over a century after the fall of Granada in 1492. It falls within the Sierra Nevada National Park and is an important hiking destination and is little known outside walking circles, and so one of the great discoveries visitors to Spain can make. The mountains of the Alpujarras are steep and broken up by deep, glaciation-formed valleys and spectacular gorges, created by ice and the rivers fed by the constantly melting snow of the Sierra Nevada. The Alpujarras are lush green wherever you look, even the bare rock often being tinted by lichen.

The region's natural beauty and that of its villages attracts walkers, hikers and trekkers from all over the world, even in winter (but take the utmost precaution if there is the slightest possibility of your encountering harsh weather conditions, which at any altitude in winter means always, even if the sunshine is hot the Sierra Nevada is a high mountain, very high indeed, rising to the 3483 m of the Mulhacen peak). A goodly number of firms offer escorted walks or walking tours of varying lengths and degrees of difficulty, and the latter may be your best bet if you are new to the area, even in terms of value for money, as accommodation and meals will be included.

Las Alpujarras were not entirely uninhabited before the 8th-century Moorish invasion, the Romans, for example, having been attracted by the mineral wealth of the Sierra Nevada (and the relative ease of its extraction, erosion by glaciation having stripped away most of the overlying soft rock). But it was skilled Berber farmers who found the region worth settling on a large scale. They founded the area's villages of Trevelez, Lanjaron, Monachil, La Calahorra, to name only a few  and created the terraced fields which collected the spring water from the melting snow of the Sierra Nevada, making farming possible. In 1492, the forced conversion of Granada's Moorish population caused many of the latter to take to the hills, where they would have mixed with the Berber farmers who had been there for centuries. The Moors of Granada and of the Alpujarras were under constant pressure from the Christians, and a decree prohibiting the use of Arabic and the Islamic religion and customs led to the Morisco uprising of 1568. This was savagely repressed, its leader, Ben Humeya, was executed in the main square of Granada, and the entire Arab-descended population of the Kingdom of Granada was expelled, including those who had converted to Christianity (on the grounds that they hadn't really converted). Philip II brought about 12,000 settlers from the north to repopulate the region, who occupied the Berber villages directly, without demolishing or rebuilding, so preserving that traditional Berber architecture, small, flat-roofed, box-shaped houses with curious tall, round chimneys, clustered about narrow, winding, often steep streets (you can see much the same in the Rif and Atlas mountains of Morocco).

Most of the Alpujarras lies within the Sierra Nevada National Park, which the Traveller's Nature Guide to Spain describes as "a botanical enclave of supreme importance," holding "more than 2100 taxa of vascular plant  almost one-third of the total flora of mainland Spain," much of which is highly threatened, so please don't pick the flowers, especially above the tree line. But we are concerned here with the gentler, greener Alpujarra, where non-naturalists are more likely to be impressed by the fauna, particularly the Spanish ibex, a mountain goat with huge horns. Unlike its recently extinct cousin, the Pyrenean ibex, this Spanish ibex is one of those rare, heartening ecological success stories: from an endangered population of 500 at the beginning of the sixties, their numbers have swelled to over 15,000, so your chances of spotting them are high. And if you have the least interest in birds, bring your binoculars: the bizarre-looking hoopoe is common, and other species include royal woodpecker, barn owl, and birds of prey like goshawk, shod eagle and sparrow hawk. 

To let you in on a secret, the key to producing good cured ham (after the quality of the meat, of course) is to get the kind of clean, dry, cool air you only find at high altitudes where humidity is low, salt your ham and more or less leave it hanging there for anything up to a couple of years. The village of Trevelez, the highest in Spain at over 1440 m, is just the place to find these conditions and its jamon serrano, though not quite reaching the stratospheric quality levels (or prices) of jamon iberico or pata negra, is much prized and I personally would risk a hernia to take one home in my suitcase with me.

Gerald Brenan, a British writer associated with the Bloomsbury group was also a student of Spanish history and society and lived in the village of Yegen in the Alpujarras after the First World War. He described the area memorably in South from Granada, now considered a travel classic and still worth reading, though you wouldn't want to use it as a guidebook. He died in Spain in 1987, leaving his body to medical science, specifically the University of Malaga. This was undoubtedly well meant, but unfortunately the university had little use for the body of an eighty-three-year-old man, however important a writer he might have been, and it was more or less kept in a pickle jar for fourteen years until a group of intellectuals headed by Spanish history expert Ian Gibson managed to have it buried. The Sierra Nevada being so huge, any attempt to explore it in detail could well, as Teresa Farino of the Traveller's Nature Guide to Spain puts it, take you the rest of your life. The Alpujarras are not quite that big, but don't expect to get the whole area under your belt in a single visit. There are lots of walking routes, most perfectly sign-posted, which range from short strolls to full-day hikes, and two long-distance routes run through the Alpujarras. GR-7 (which extends all the way from Cadiz to Greece) crosses the Alpujarra Alta, the Upper Alpujarras - it begins at the spa town of Lanjaron and passes through Soportujar, Pampaneira, Bubion, Capileira, Pitres, Portugos and Busquistar, before a long climb up to Trevelez, from where it drops back down again to Juviles, Timar, Lobras, Cadiar, Narila, Berchules, Mecina Bombaron and less strenuous (though it is still an 8-day trek if you do the entire Alpujarran haul), crossing the Alpujarras at a lower level.

Jamon serrano is, naturally, the star of Alpujarran cuisine, on its own, in bocadillo, or in dishes like habas con jamon, beans with ham. Fresh river trout, cooked as trucha a la alpujarrena, is also to be watched out for, game is good, and the filling peasant dish, migas alpujarrenas, fried breadcrumbs with garlic, onion, green pepper and tomato, is served as accompaniment to meat dishes. Excellent quality wine is produced in the Alpujarra Baja, Lower Alpujarras, particularly in Albunol and Albondon.

To travel the region, something leisurely is called for. The Alpujarras is not the place to try out your new Mustang GT. As you will have gathered, walking is the preferred option, but cycling (even motorcycling, if your silencer is doing its job properly) or horse riding are also enjoyable ways to get about.

(Information gathered from the Spain for Visitors website)