Ceramic artist Lars Pranger in Mecina Fondales

While visiting the Taha valley one of the things that will probably catch your atention are the beautiful blue and white tiles with the names of the streets, paths, springs and monuments. These ceramic tiles that enliven the seven Taha villages were made by Lars Pranger, a Swedish painter who moved to Spain in 1962. About twenty-five years ago he set up home in Mecina Fondales, where he found the inspiration and tranquility to develop his passion for ceramics. His clay artwork can be admired and bought in the Casa de Arte in Pitres or by appointment in his workshop at the bottom of the village. Lars can also be contacted for special orders.





Related articles:
- Alpujarran handcraft or artesanía
- Sendero de La Taha with photo of the Fuente de Fondales for which Lars Pranger made the tiles with the name

Related links:
- Lars Pranger in ´Viajeros por Andalucía´ (interview starts 17 minutes into the programme)

Related key words: cerámica tradicional española

Música en las Montañas, La Taha 2010

The VII Festival ´Música en las Montañas´, a series of summer concerts of classical music, will take place from July to September. The concerts are on old threshing circles, village squares or in churches of differrent villages in the Taha valley. The first concert will be given by the Coral Ciudad de Granada on Friday the 30th of July in Pitres. The festival ´Music in the Mountains´ is organized by the Alexander Music School in Ferreirola and the Ayuntamiento de La Taha.

Live guitar music in La Cueva de Mora Luna 15th April 2010

Alpujarrahoy let us know by email (not on the blog) that coming Thursday at 21:00 hours Richard Waterborn will play classical guitar music in the bar la Cueva de Mora Luna in Mecina (Taha).
The place is small and if you want to have dinner there, reservation of the table is needed.
Entrance "Tela Marinera / Pass the hat"
Telephone: 958 765202 / 664 722145
See also an earlier article on this blog about La Cueva de Mora Luna

The Alexander Music School, first 2010 concert

The Alexander Music School in Ferreirola organizes its first concert of 2010 on Saturday the 27th of March at 19.00 hours. The group Amadís Antigua will perform baroque music. The concert will take place in the Ferreirola Church (La Taha de Pitres). It is a concert in aid of the restoration fund for this church. More details can be found here.
The Alexander music school is also known for the organisation of the festival Music in the Mountains or Musica en las Montañas. We do not know the plans for 2010 yet. CD recordings of concerts of previous years form part of the Wapapura project. Within our Taha label you will find more articles on the 2009 festival.

Related articles:
- Música en las Montañas 2009, an intimate concert in Atalbéitar (08 august 2009)
- Música para Sierra Nevada in La Taha (21 august 2009)

Related links.
- Ferreirola on Turgranada tourist board

related keywords: musica, muziek, musique, musik, eventos , evenementen, evénements, veranstaltungen

Cafe-piano-bar Cueva de Mora Luna

"La Cueva de Mora Luna" is a small café piano bar in the village of Mecina in the Taha valley.
In a relaxed and casual atmosphere, the cheerful owner Carlos Anibal di Palma Acuña, serves drinks as well as nice food amongst which a wide variety of salads and pizza´s. It is situated along the road that connects Mecina Fondales and Ferreirola. There is a small terace with nice views over the Sierra de Mecina. Carlose´s place is often filled with life music, and whenever a musician knows how to play a tango, the Argentine host will join in with a song.
It is an excellent place to stop for lunch while doing one of our Taha walks.

Opening hours are from 12.00 - 24.00 hours in summer and 12.00 - 17.00 hours in winter.
Mondays closed.
telephone: 958 765202
montebaires@yahoo.es



Related links:
- videos of performances on Youtube

related keywords: musica, muziek, musique, musik, comer y beber, eten en drinken, manger et boir, essen und trinken

Música para Sierra Nevada in La Taha

Throughout the year 2009, different exhibitions and activities are organised to commemorate the XX ´Aniversario de la Ley de Espacios Naturales Protegidos de Andalucía´. We can find the programme for this on the website of the Junta de Andalucía. ´Música en las Montañas´ forms part of the festivities organized by the Parque Natural y Nacional de Sierra Nevada. For this important event, a choir was formed which gave a concert last night on the church square of Pitres. Apart from a performance of the choir with an orchestra, there were recitals of chamber music with cello and piano. Cat Jary, initiator of the concerts in the Alpujarras, played the cello with her former music teacher Bernard Gregor-Smith, pianist Yolande Wrigley and the talented son of this couple Ben Gregor-Smith. This quartet gave a beautiful recital of chamber music on the threshing floor of Capilerilla and later on in the evening on the Plaza de la Iglesia in Pitres. It is quite something that professional musicians that are used to playing in world-famous concert halls, are prepared to play in the open air on an ´era´ in the Alpujarras.
Although tonight is the last evening of the special concerts of ´Música para Sierra Nevada´, the programme ´Música en las Montañas´ continues with concerts on the 4th and 5th of September, the 31st of October and the 1st of November.

Fiestas Patronales San Roque, Pitres 2009

San Roque is the patron saint of many villages and cities throughout the world. Although this is not mentioned in the text of the life of Saint Roch on Wikipedia, this French saint is also the santo patrón of Pitres. The festivities in this vilage in his honour, will take place from the 11th to the 18th of August. This is the weekend programme of the ´Fiestas Patronalers en honor a San Roque en Pitres 2009

Música en las Montañas 2009, an intimate concert in Atalbéitar

Yesterday we assisted one of the concerts of the programme Música en las Montañas. On the Plaza de Atalbéitar, Boris played the violin and clarinet and Frank the accordeon. They played, amongst others, klezmer - traditional jewish folk music - and Argentinian tangos. They created with their music a fairy-tale athmosphere on the village square of this tiny little village. Tonight they will play at 22.00 hours in the larger town of Pitres which we can see on the programme that the Alexander Music School recenlty published on their website. On Youtube you can see a video of their performance in 2008 in Ferreirola with the same intimate atmosphere.

Música en las montañas, summer music festival in the Alpujarra

´Musica en la Montañas´ is a succesful cultural initiative in the Alpujarra. This is the fifth summer that this festival of classical and folkloric music is organised. Like in former years, there will be a concerts on ´eras´ (threshing floors) and village squares, in churches and in the building of the Alexander Music School (AMS) in Ferreirola. Cat Jary, resident director of this music school started it all up. She has devised an interesting and varied programme of activities throughout the year and can now count on the cooperation of the town hall of La Taha and the Junta de Andalucía.
The latest addition to the activities is Alpujarra R-3, a mountain restoration project. The project works with local Alpujarran farmers and teams of volunteers to restore the ancient Moorish irrigation systems and rebuild dry stone walls which support terraces, so that once again those terraces can be cultivated. The Alexander Music Scool, in collaboration with the local government and Wapapura produced their first CD, including the Choir of the Taha and many concerts of the Music in the Mountains programme. In the newspaper article ´Música en las Montañas de la Alpujarra, fuente de vida para la tierra´ published in the Ideal the seventeenth of June, more information on this latest project can be found.
General information on the the different initiatives can be found on the website of the Alexander Music School. Unfortunately, the programma of this year´s festival has not been published yet on this website. We were therefore glad that we found the programme in the brochure ´Acércate a Sierra Nevada´, a publication of the Consejería de Medio Ambiente of the Junta de Andalucía. We also came across the programme ´Musíca en las Montañas´ julio-noviembre 2009 on the blog of Antonio J. Puerta of Cortijo Puerta in Órgiva.

Ruined mill below Fondales

This year there is a lot more water to be seen and heard everywhere compared to previous years. Walking through the Taha valley with guests today, we enjoyed the sight and the sound of the torrent below. In the past, the water of the Trevélez river powered numerous mills of which the ruins can still be seen. According to Turgranada, this old flour mill below Fondales was considered in its time one of the most representative works of the medieval architecture of the Alpujarra. But unlike the mill next to the Panjuila bridge which is on the list of ´BIC: Bienes de Interés Cultural´, this one is not officially part of the local heritage. On the website of the ADR Alpujarra it is explained that this mill the ´molino de fondales´ was built in the XVIII or XIX century.

Sendero de La Taha

The Consejería de Medio Ambiente gives out a quarterly brochure called ´Acércate a Sierra Nevada´. It has, amongst other things, an agenda with the different festivities in the villages of the Parque Nacional y Parque Natural de Sierra Nevada and a recommendation for a walk in the area. In the last publication ´Invierno 2009´, the recommendation is a walk in the Taha valley, ´Sendero de la Taha´. It starts in Busquístar and has a total length of 9,5 kilometres. It passes through five pictoresque villages, namely Ferreirola, Fondales, Mecinilla, Mecina and Atalbéitar. We checked out this route today, and came to the conclusion that it was a perfect suggestion for a sunny winter day. While there was still a lot of snow to be found around the neighbouring village of Trevélez, in the Taha valley we experienced an early spring day. People were harvesting there olives, oranges were ripe on the trees, the first flowers and trees had opened up, a lot of birds were to be spotted and even a butterfly. It is nice to hear the water of the river Trevélez down below and to pass numerous fountains like the Fuente de Fondales or ´Fuente de la Ermita´ as it is called according the ADR. We enjoyed this walk so much, that we included it into our file, offering our guests a more detailed map and description. While working up the route, we found out that it is one of the official waymarked local walks called ´La Taha de Pitres´, and described briefly in the hiking guide that goes along with a map of Editorial Alpina (walk 9). It is therefore waymarked with wooden posts, but with the time the colours yellow and white of this Pequeño Recorrido, have almost disappeared completely.
 

Fa Re tetería in Ferreirola

A visit of La Taha valley with its pretty villages we quite often recommend to people, because there are many fantastic hiking possibilities. In this area it is easy to ´devise´ your own route with copies out of one of our books. As Ferreirola is in the centre of this valley, it´s likely that you pass through this village. If you do, we can highly recommend having a break at Fa Re Tetería-Cafetería. Fátima and Rebecca, the two ladies that opened their Morrocan style tetería at the end of July, gave the place a lot of character. Apart from a wide choice of teas with lovely home-made pies, a good glass of wine with some cheese can also be enjoyed at Fa Re. When the weather is good it´s possible to sit outside and enjoy the views down into the valley. You can find this coffee and tea house at the bottom of the village in Calle Soledad, and it is open from Thursday to Sunday from 10.00 to 23.00 hours. (FaRe)