The Pinsapo de las Escaleretas, declared a natural monument in October 2001, is a marvelous tree.
It rises to more than 30 meters high and is estimated to last between four and five centuries.
Legend has it that a woman of great kindness and respect for nature was buried at her feet.
It is just a fable, but the artist Diego Guerrero took it as a starting point to create a project that has changed his town: Parauta (Málaga, 272 inhabitants).
The Enchanted Forest is a route of just over a kilometer that accumulates a handful of sculptures of fairies, wizards and goblins, most of them made by the artist himself in chestnut wood.
A simple idea that has revolutionized the town, which receives up to 2,000 people every weekend in search of the figures, but also charming alleys and a natural environment marked by the large chestnut tree.
Several routes also advance through dense pine forests towards the second highest peak in the province of Malaga, the Torrecilla peak, 1,919 meters above sea level.
Next to the church of the Immaculate Conception, another enormous tree—this time with a face and hands and feet made of fiber—welcomes visitors on top of letters in which you can read the name of the municipality.
It is a mandatory stop for those who come to Parauta and the place for the first photo of the many that will end up in the mobile gallery during the visit.
Here every corner is designed for Instagram.
From its twenty chestnut wood benches to the inscription that says “Kiss me in Parauta” or the hundreds of flower pots placed everywhere.
They are the icing on the cake of a long beautification policy started three decades ago.
There are hardly any cables in the streets and almost all services—including trash cans—are buried or hidden between walls, like the one that houses a graffiti that serves as a tribute to Mateo Peña and Vicente Sánchez, two local wise men who teach esparto grass crafts. in a workshop that is taught free of charge every Monday.
Nearby, the fountain of the farmhouse, of Arab origin, is so cared for that it seems like it was inaugurated yesterday.
Its long history points to the opposite.
It is a relic of a time, the 9th century, when Omar Ibn Hafsun, a rebel who successfully challenged the Umayyad emirate of Cordoba, was born here.
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“The one that has gotten involved,” Guerrero acknowledges from his workshop, located a stone's throw from the new parking lot with capacity for 400 vehicles – thanks to two neighbors who have given up plots – which hangs the full sign every weekend.
The sculptor's work area occupies the old chestnut cooperative, closed since 2020 due to a double plague: a wasp that attacks the fruit and a fungus that affects the roots.
He had been thinking about the possibility of placing some of his sculptures outdoors for years and ended up convincing the mayor, Katrin Ortega.
In July 2022 they inaugurated the Enchanted Forest in the hope that it would attract attention and to attract some visitors.
The first images went viral in a few days.
“Suddenly we had thousands of people here in the middle of summer,” recalls the councilor, happy because hers is also, since last January, one of the Most Beautiful Towns in Spain, according to the association of the same name.
The artist Diego Guerro working in his workshop, in the Malaga town of Parauta.Nacho Sanchez
Now finding a rural house to spend the weekend is a complicated task.
And the real estate market has moved with unusual vigor: 38 homes have been sold in the last year alone.
Thanks to the sculpture project, Parauta has recovered a vitality that not even the oldest people remembered.
“It's incredible: in November we fill up every day,” says Maite Blanco, 37 years old and owner of El Anafe, a restaurant that her father, Tomás Blanco, opened in 2000. After years with the business on a slow burn, she took the witness right after the pandemic.
Nothing about her made him predict what was coming to her.
Every day the phone doesn't stop ringing with clients looking to reserve a table in the dining room, prepared for 36 guests.
And every weekend she has a line at the door with people longing for a spot in the second meal shift.
Wild boar in mushroom sauce and chestnut venison are her star dishes, prepared in stoves where everything is cooked with time and love.
One of the works that make up the Enchanted Forest of Parauta, a route of just over a kilometer that accumulates a handful of sculptures of fairies, wizards and goblins.Nacho Sanchez
A little further up, Matías Hinojo, 60, opened the El Farol bar in 2021.
He specializes in goat and game meats.
Goat cheeses and local sausages complete the menu.
“Before this was a rural town: now it is a cosmopolitan town,” says this man from Cádiz from Villamartín who has passed through kitchens in Peru, Scotland and half of Spain.
A few meters from its terrace, the roofs reveal the crown of the Vallecillo oak, more than 400 years old and which stars in the town's coat of arms.
A little further down, the family of Natasha Milincic, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, moved at the end of 2022 to open a grocery store, the only one there.
“Living here is like being with family all day,” says she, who also cooks pizzas in a wood-fired oven.
Crafts, camping and hiking
Among the machinery for peeling and drying chestnuts of the old cooperative, a huge green snail, a colorful bee and two large rabbits wait, patiently, with a small gnome with a blue hat and long white beard at their feet, near a handful of red mushrooms. speckled.
They are sculptures—also made by Guerrero, who is already preparing another project in the neighboring municipality of Cartajima—that will be part of the second phase of the Enchanted Forest.
It is not the only attraction installed in recent years, always with social networks as a background: there are also 110 cattail chairs purchased at Wallapop, colored and hung on the facades of the homes as a tribute to the tradition of sunbathing in they.
They were installed for the August fair.
A month before, a magical festival is celebrated every year.
And then, in November, the rabbit festival, with free tastings.
Mural dedicated to Mateo Peña and Vicente Sánchez in one of the streets of Parauta, where you can also see the chairs that decorate the town's roads.Nacho Sanchez
Among goblins, fairies and wizards there is also a blue winged horse that puts an end to the fantasy of the trail.
“Colorín colorado, this story is over,” a sign there, yet to be installed, will soon say.
Beyond that you return to reality, because the route can continue to other towns in the Genal Valley, islands among the large chestnut trees.
The river that gives its name to this territory is exactly the area where the trail divides.
Towards one side, head towards Cartajima and, if you feel like it, continue to Júzcar, with Smurf-blue houses.
Towards the other direction it heads to Igualeja, where the source of the Genal is located.
They are always paths full of ups and downs between old trees that offer a different landscape every time of the year.
The predominant colors change like those of a traffic light: green in spring, yellow in late summer and reddish tones in autumn.
These are the changes offered by the leaves of the chestnut trees, brought by the Romans two millennia ago and today part of the so-called Copper Forest.
General view of Parauta, member of the Most Beautiful Villages in Spain Association since January 2024.Nacho Sanchez
Already on the road to San Pedro Alcántara you will find another of Parauta's treasures.
Next to the Conejeras recreational area is the municipal
campsite
of the same name, with pitches for tents, parking for caravans, four
bungalows
and a hostel with capacity for 24 people.
Four kilometers away, among pine trees, gall oaks and fir trees, the Las Navas farmhouse also offers accommodation options on a surprising plain that is usually covered with snow every winter.
Those in charge offer routes on foot, in 4x4 vehicles or electric bicycles, as well as activities such as bird or star watching.
Every Thursday they offer interpretation routes through the interior of the property, in Spanish and English, which require prior reservation.
Walking is also possible without a guide.
All you have to do is continue the track to the Quejigales recreational area.
It is the starting point of trails that ascend to Puerto de los Pilones and the summit of Torrecilla, although already in the municipality of Tolox and within the Sierra de las Nieves national park.
Going down, another dirt road deviates to the Pinsapo de las Escaleretas, from whose legend the forest that has transformed Parauta today was born.
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