Two kinds of water from one mountain
Lanjarón's river drains a basin of 54 km² that falls from 3,180 m to 230 m above sea level,[4] and that drop sorts the water before anyone builds a spa around it. The soft, light water that stays near the surface feeds a great many springs, and it is the water that goes into bottles.[5]
The name already describes the setup. It reaches us from al-Andalus, where it meant a place abundant in pools, springs and standing water,[6] on slopes with a Morisco past told in the Alpujarras Morisco villages. Danone, which owns the bottled brand, says the water is born above 3,000 m,[7] though that figure is the producer's own.
So the label on the bottle does not describe what the town's spa serves. The balneario draws on springs lower down and from deeper rock, and both ends of the range sit inside a single municipality.
Which fountain to drink from
A public fountain in Lanjarón does not automatically mean spring water. Most in the town run chlorinated mains water, and three on the outskirts carry the fresh spring supply.[8]
The springs behind the balneario
Lanjarón has more than fifty springs, mostly on the Bordaila hill between the Salado and Lanjarón rivers, and the balneario stands on that same hill.[9] The spa works with just six of them,[10] so any tally of "the springs" depends on who is counting.
The balneario's own list is the one to trust for the drinking cure, with the effect and mineralisation it gives each spring:
- Capuchina: purifying, indicated for constipation, liver and bile ducts; very highly mineralised[11]
- Salud I: aids digestion; low mineralisation, slightly carbonated[12]
- Salud II: aids digestion and digestive-tract problems; medium mineralisation, very carbonated[13]
- Capilla: aids digestion and appetite; medium-low mineralisation, gaseous[14]
- San Vicente: diuretic, for kidney and urinary-tract problems; very low mineralisation[15]
- El Salado: used for baths rather than drinking; sedative, highly mineralised and ferruginous[16]
Capuchina was always the one patients asked for. Of roughly 19,000 spa guests recorded up to 1923, about 12,000 came for it.[17] That is a heavy lean toward a single spout for a spa with six.
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Rock Climbing at Los Cahorros
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The saltier, warmer, carbonated springs belong to faults in the mountain's flank, and a University of Granada hydrochemistry study singles out samples from Capuchina, Fonteforte and the Baños spring as chloride sodium-calcium water with higher mineralisation than the rest.[18][19] That is why a glass of Capuchina and a bottle of the soft surface water taste like products of different places.
A discovery nobody can date
The usual date is 1774, but only as the year some authors propose, and no document mentions the waters before 1790.[20] Sixteen years of oral tradition sit between the claimed discovery and the first paper.
A local heritage record repeats the date for the Capilla spring, which it says began to be used therapeutically in 1774, with the other nearby springs developed from it.[21] That is the same tradition restated, and someone has to drink the water before anyone writes it down.
The Capuchina spring turned up in 1792,[22] soon after the first written notices, and it went on to become the most used spring in the spa. The cautious reading is the right one: 1774 is the tradition's date, 1790 is the first a historian can put a finger on, and a flat "discovered in 1774" smooths over that gap.
From state asset to private spa
The spa began its modern life as public property. After the nineteenth-century disentailment laws the State sold it off in 1865, and the Duchess of Santoña became its first private owner.[23] Her small palace stayed attached to the grounds: Silverio Carrillo bought both the spa grounds and the Duchess's palace there,[24] and the whole lot changed hands in Madrid in October 1897 for 100,000 pesetas.[25] That put the Carrillo family in charge of the buildings that define the spa today, though not for long. Matilde Carrillo donated her share to her congregation, the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.[26]
The rebuilding came in between. From 1927 a two-storey brick building with a side tower replaced the small house over the Salud I spring,[27] and it still gives the balneario its silhouette.
The guest list shows how far the reputation travelled. Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Lorca, Falla, Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell are among the names recorded in the town,[28] and Woolf's Bloomsbury circle also reached the Alpujarras by way of Gerald Brenan's years at Yegen.
From spa cure to supermarket shelf
Selling the water, as opposed to drinking it on the spot, started earlier than most people assume. A Junta de Andalucía archive document dates the bottling business to 1830 and a "modern plant" to 1950.[29]
The ownership that matters for the brand begins with the order's sale. Manuel Gallardo Torrens, a businessman from Santafé, bought the spa from it in 1946,[30] or in 1947 in Piñar Samos's academic history, which treats the purchase as the start of a new stage for the balneario.[31]
Salud and Fonte Forte table waters reached the market in 1959,[32] and Piñar Samos dates the first mechanical bottling plant to 1964.[33] The archive's 1950 "modern plant" and that 1964 "first mechanical" one sit fourteen years apart, so the accounts either describe different installations or the same one under different adjectives. In 1964 Gallardo Torrens told the minister Fraga Iribarne he was set on industrialising bottled-water production,[34] and by 1967 the company was a sociedad anónima.[35]
The brand then followed the usual path of regional Spanish water. In 2006 Font Vella and Aguas de Lanjarón merged, both already inside the Danone group.[36] The bottle on a supermarket shelf and the spa on the Bordaila hill now share a name and a hillside but not an owner.
- 1774
Traditional discovery date
Given by some authors; no documents before 1790.
- 1830
Bottling for sale begins
Dated by the Granada provincial archive.
- 1865
State sells the spa
The Duchess of Santoña becomes the first private owner.
- 1946/47
Gallardo Torrens buys the spa
Two sources, one year apart.
- 1959
Table waters launched
Salud and Fonte Forte reach the market.
- 1964
Mechanical bottling plant
The first mechanical line is installed.
- 2006
Font Vella merger
Font Vella and Aguas de Lanjarón merge.
For a visitor the consequence is simple. The bottle gives you the soft end of the range, and only the balneario gives you the rest.
Seeing the springs today
The reason to go is the drinking cure itself. At the balneario the mineral-medicinal water is taken at a time and rhythm prescribed by the spa's doctor,[37] so it is not a sip from a tap, and Capuchina, the strongest of the five drinking springs, is the glass to ask about.
The balneario belongs to Relais Termal, which closed its purchase by acquiring 95% of the company's shares,[38] and it markets its Aquatherma circuit as the largest leisure and thermal circuit in Andalusia.[39] Hours and prices are for the spa to confirm.
Recommended tours
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In town, the architect Juan Domingo Santos turned the old slaughterhouse sheds into the Museo del Agua,[40] and its entrance pavilion evokes the eighteenth-century cover built over the Capuchina spring.[41] Opening hours and prices are worth checking locally before you go.
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Lanjarón is the gateway to the Alpujarras, so it slots into the Alpujarras day trip from Granada as the first stop, and the road above it climbs toward the village behind jamón de Trevélez.