Padules

Story and present

Padules is a small village — just over four hundred residents — in the middle stretch of the Andarax valley, wedged between the Sierra de Gádor and the Sierra Nevada. Its white houses look over the riverbed, which has left here the most spectacular mark in the whole comarca.

Just outside the village, the Andarax’s erosion has carved out Las Canales: around two kilometres of gorge with waterfalls, crystal-clear pools, rocks rounded by the current and a ribbon of riverside vegetation — ash, poplar, willow — that comes as a surprise in the middle of Almería. The site has been protected as a Natural Monument since 2019, with 9.63 hectares listed by the Junta de Andalucía.

The PR-A 360 trail links Almócita, Las Canales, Padules and Beires, and squeezes through the Los Canjorros gorge, a passage so narrow that one person can touch the Sierra de Gádor and the Sierra Nevada at the same time. It is the comarca’s benchmark walk: water, shade and rock in the heart of the Andarax valley.

Padules also holds a major date in Andalusian history: in the spring of 1570 the Morisco surrender known as the Peace of the Alpujarras was signed here before Don Juan de Austria, ending the war that was ravaging these mountains. Every spring the whole village brings it back to life with a historical re-enactment in period dress. The church of Santa María la Mayor, a sixteenth-century Mudéjar building raised over the former mosque, rounds off the visit.