Las Tres Aguas

Published on 05/02/2018

Segura de la Sierra (Sierra de Segura) , Orcera (Sierra de Segura)

Monuments, Nature, Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas Natural Park

Deep in the Segura, within the Natural Park, countless small hamlets lie almost or completely abandoned today after the mass exodus of the 1950s and 60s.
The valley of the Madera river, one of the most beautiful parts of the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas Natural Park, holds many of them: Prado Maguillo, Los Anchos, Venta Rampias, Huelga Utrera, La Conquista, Arroyo Blanquillo, La Peruela and Los Gandones, among others.
Las Tres Aguas is a group of farmsteads in a hard-to-reach spot beside the stream that gives it its name. It was once home to some 30 people and met the same fate as most of the farmsteads in the area, its people leaving in search of a more prosperous future.
This article is a tribute to Estanislao Romero, who recently fulfilled his dream of rebuilding “El Reservado”, the farmhouse at Las Tres Aguas where he was born.

More about this place…

The story of Las Tres Aguas is the story of most of the small hamlets and farmsteads scattered through the depths of the Sierra de Segura. The immense beauty of the mountains also makes daily life hard, which drove many of the people of the area to leave in the 1950s and 60s for the industrial regions of the peninsula, in search of a more prosperous future. In the second Lugares Míticos de Jaén book, Andrés Ortiz Tafur writes about these hamlets and farmsteads, and in particular about Las Tres Aguas and Estanislao Romero, the hero of a lovely story that casts a ray of light on the dark present of depopulation and oblivion hanging over these places.