On a south mountain in the Sierra Nevada, up at around 940 metres high, exists a small village called Soportuja. The name comes from the word ''support''. many of their houses are built in part over big beams that extends the space available for building.
Marlene and I left at 8 am and returned at 7 pm yesterday. It was a comfortable but scary drive. we stopped in Nerja before climbing the mountain. The road gives the word snaky a new meaning! It takes an hour and a half to climb those 940 meters by bus. It is very narrow. The bus had to slow down to a stop for other vehicules.
The village was down to 125 inhabitants in 2017. There are many nice villages much lower in the mountain that attracts tourism. SO they never went up further. After the return of Christianity following the moorish rein, there was a witch hunt of some kind for anyone that was not catholic. One really old lady from the village was killed. So they figured they could claim to be a witch village. They even built a house from the Slavic folklore: Baba yaga, an ogress that catches, cooks and eats children and lives in a house that turns and sits on chicken legs. She lives with two other sisters.
Even though, we know it was all created to attract interest in their little village, they do not hide that fact, it was fun to see. It is génuinely a beautiful spot, which in 6 years went from 125 to 600 and some. So I guess it did the trick. So you arrive at the bottom of the village at the witche's head and start your walk up were the museum.
There is quite a bit of interesting things to see. I will be sending the pictures to my friend Nicky who loves anything withy or halloweeny, Here is a litlle bit from the museum. It was complete with digital images seemingly floating into thin air. We then went higher and higher and higher. where little shops were awaiting for us. The influx of tourism is what is making the village survive. Creating jobs. The whole village is into decorating their places, and the inhabitants were very patient with the disturbance it causes.
