Culture
Lanjarón’s cultural heritage consists of its fiestas, monuments, urban design and fantastic cuisine. The municipality also has its own water museum, the Museo del Agua, a collection which takes on a particular significance given that the village of Lanjarón has developed, to a large degree, thanks to spa tourism and the commercial exploitation of water.
Typical Cuisine
The most notable dishes in Lanjarón include: potaje de castañas (sweet chestnut purée), ajopollo (a dressing made with oil, bread and almonds), jayuyo (a sort of flat bread eaten with ham and oil) and puchero de hinojos (fennel stew).
Historia
The first settlers in the municipality may have ar-rived as long ago as the Neolithic Period, when the people who lived on the coast travelled up the river valleys to find pasture for their livestock. There is also some evidence that the Romans were present in the region, and they may have been drawn to the area because iron was available here. It is possible that chestnut trees were first grown here at that point, like in many other places. Chestnuts are now a quintessential part of the landscape of Lanjarón. However, there is no clear evidence of human occupation of the area until the 13th century, when a group of Berber colonisers settled here. They may have been the ones who gave the village of Lanjarón its name, which is almost certainly a castilianisation of the Arabic word Al-lancharon, which means “place of springs”.
Lanjarón continued under Moorish rule until the Kingdom of Granada fell into the hands of the Christians, although the Moorish settlers were allowed to remain here after that. The fact that they stayed here was actually the cause of some of the most turbulent events in the area’s history, during the Morisco Revolt. There was further upheaval at the end of the 19th century, but due to natural causes, namely earthquakes and cholera epidemics, which devastated the municipality for some time.