The Andalusian flavour that never stopped existing.

The story

The alquería that returned charcuterie to al-Andalus.

In Puebla de Don Fadrique, the last village of Granada before the sierra dissolves into white plateau, stands a low stone building with an enclosed courtyard and a short minaret. They call it the Alquería de Rosales. The word is Arabic, *al-qarya*: a small village, a house with land around it. The choice was deliberate.

In the late nineteen-seventies, a young Andalusian woman, born in the area, read the Qur'an for the first time. She wasn't looking for a new religion; she was looking, she says, for a way to speak to God that didn't have to ask anyone's permission. In 1980 she made the *shahada* in a small room in Madrid. They gave her the name Maimuna. When she came back to the village her parents said almost nothing; they set an extra plate at the table and went on raising Segureño sheep as they had for four generations.

> *"I came back because the land was already praying on its own. Here the olive trees carry the word of al-Andalus long before the new Muslims arrived."*

« I came back because the land was already praying on its own. Here the olive trees carry the word of al-Andalus long before the new Muslims arrived. »