Long story short: Andalusia – Júzcar

31 August, 2018

In our ‘Long Story Short’ series, we’ll choose a different interesting region to focus on each time. Sanne and Michèle are visiting some of the most beautiful places on their trip through Andalusia in Spain. After Ronda, Córdoba and El Torcal de Antequera, it’s now the turn of Júzcar, a truly unique spot.

Júzcar is also known as the blue or ‘smurf’ village. We’d already heard of the blue city of Chefchaouen in Morocco, but we had no idea that there was one in Spain too. For their film ‘The Smurfs’, the brand Sony chose Júzcar to act as a marketing stunt. The village previously attracted around 500 tourists a year, but grew into a huge tourist attraction with 250,000 visitors annually.

Unfortunately, as of August 15th 2017, Júzcar has had to start creating some distance from the smurfs and all the blue, as it lost a court case with Belgium. We didn’t know any of this, and visited the village for a day during our trip. Everything was still blue, there were many tourists wandering around, as well as lots of Smurfs. There wasn’t much to see in the low season, but it was funny to see the houses of all 223 inhabitants painted blue.

Have you ever been to Júzcar? Or do you know of any interesting places to visit nearby? Please let us know by leaving a comment.