Bubión

Bubión's earliest traces go back to Roman times, burial remains from that period have been found here. There are also records suggesting a small Visigothic settlement in the area toward the end of that era. It was under Arab rule, though, that the village grew most significant, becoming the head of the Taha de Poqueira, an administrative district taking in Capileira, Pampaneira, Bubión, and the now-vanished village of Alguástar.

Bubión was the first of these to have a formal council. After the Catholic Monarchs took Granada in 1492, pressure on the Moorish population steadily intensified. In 1568, a wealthy local landowner named Fernando de Válor, who took the name Abén Humeya, rose against Philip II, sparking a broad morisco revolt on 24 December across the Kingdom of Granada.

Internal divisions led to Abén Humeya's own death at the hands of fellow moriscos in 1569, and John of Austria soon suppressed the rebellion. The moriscos were expelled definitively in 1609, and the village was resettled by colonists from Galicia, León, Asturias, and Castile. Today Bubión is a rural high-mountain municipality in the Alpujarras.

Its entire territory falls within the Sierra Nevada natural and national park, and the village itself holds the status of historic-artistic ensemble.

Bubión hangs on the side of the Poqueira gorge in the Alpujarra, below the Veleta peak of Sierra Nevada, and it is one of the clearest examples of the region's Berber-style architecture. Houses step down the slope with flat roofs of launa clay and slate, and tinaos, the covered passages that shelter the doorways, carry the lanes beneath the upper floors.

From the thirteenth century it was the head of the Taha de Poqueira, the district that also took in Capileira and Pampaneira, and the villages still read as one landscape of white cubes on the mountainside. It lies inside the Sierra Nevada national and natural park, and its position facing the Mediterranean keeps winters surprisingly mild for a village at 1,350 metres.

Bubión joined Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España in 2018. The label is awarded by a private association, not the state: a village applies and is audited against around 40 criteria, from how its historic buildings are conserved to the upkeep of its streets, and members are reviewed and can lose it. Bubión is one of 19 members in Andalucía, out of 126 in Spain. See all heritage towns in Andalucía.