Turrillas

〈italiano〉

Turrillas is one of the several white villages scattered over the deserted mountains of this part of Andalucia. It is located at 850 meters above sea level and has about 200 inhabitants. It can be reached along a secondary road that climbs the mountains and connects Nijar to Tabernas and Sierra de Los Filabros to Sierra Alhamilla.

We arrive on a Tuesday afternoon in August. The church is closed and the village seem completely uninhabited. Let’s try to ask in the town bar: the man, very kind, says that perhaps a lady has the key; his wife, much less polite, says that nobody has the key and it is impossible to enter the church.

Then we ask the pharmacist who shows us who is the lady with the key. So we go to call the old woman (no bell at the door which, anyway, is open). In front of the door baskets of freshly picked almonds drying in the sun.

She is very kind, takes the key and opens the church to us; we take some pictures and leave an offer. Taken from a mystical crisis (but above all to try to camouflage the real reason why we are here) I sit in adoration on the bench in front of the altar.

In For a few Dollars more, the church is the interior of the Indio house (the exterior is Torre de los Alumbres); here the Indio explains to his gang the plan to attack the Bank of El Paso.