Alcalá de los Gazules, "the next Vejer"?
Alcalá has just been voted the most magical town in Andalucía (of course some of us have always known that, but now it's official). There is no doubt that the number of visitors has increased dramatically over the last few years, especially since the Covid pandemic as more people opt for self-catering holidays in the countryside rather than crowded beach hotels. (They are easy to spot, wearing shorts in November and frowning at their phones trying to work out in which of the narrow backstreets their accommodation is.) The number of self-catering holiday lets in Alcalá has gone from two or three pre-Covid to over thirty today, as enterprising young people convert their late grandparents' abandoned dwellings into sparkling new air-conditioned apartments with fitted kitchens, hot-tubs and Ikea's finest wall art (see a list of them here ). Of course, it's great to see semi-derelict properties restored and it provides work for local builders, but one can't help wonderi...