San Enrique de Guadiaro is a small agricultural village on the far bank of the Guadiaro river, reached from the coast across the old iron bridge. Around a thousand people live there and the economy still runs on citrus, mainly oranges and lemons grown in the river floodplain. The small Plaza de la Fuente is the centre of the village.
Founded by the family behind the gin
San Enrique was created in 1887 when Manuel Domingo Larios, Marqués de Larios y Guadiaro, established the Sociedad Industrial y Agrícola de Guadiaro. The company was set up to control citrus growing in the Guadiaro valley and to work the land commercially. The population grew, and San Enrique was founded alongside two other villages further up the valley, Secadero and San Martín de Tesorillo. All three depended entirely on citrus and later on fruit juice manufacturing.
The name follows a family habit. The Larios traditionally named towns on their land after family members, and Enrique Croke Larios was next in line. The Larios name is better known today for gin than for oranges, an association that only took hold after 1916.
The part of the story most guides leave out
During the 1930s the Sociedad Industrial y Agrícola de Guadiaro was sold to the Mallorcan financier Juan March, who used the profits of the company to help finance the military uprising of 1936. The business was broken up and sold off to individuals and small companies in the 1940s.
That is the reason the village looks the way it does. What began as a single company town outlived the company by eighty years, and the citrus groves around it are now in many hands rather than one.
The village today
San Enrique is small and unhurried, and most of it can be walked in twenty minutes. The Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Fátima and the Capilla de la Visitación give the village its quiet centre, and there are fountains, small squares and modest monuments scattered through it, including the Fuente del Chorro and the Alameda Alfonso XI.
Eating is disproportionately good for the size of the place. There is a long-standing venta and a restaurant carrying the Los Álamos name from the old farm, and the range across the village runs from Spanish tapas to Argentine steaks and Thai, with Venta Manolo, Cancha II, a Thai restaurant and El Patio among the names locals use. The Argentine grill sits beside the Ayala polo grounds just outside the village, which fills the calendar here through the polo season.
Los Alcornocales natural park begins a short drive north, with cork oak forest, walking routes and good birdwatching, so San Enrique also works as the point where the coast stops and the countryside starts.
Festivals
The romería is usually held in the middle of May and the feria in early August. Both are village-scale events rather than tourist ones, which is the appeal.
Who it suits
San Enrique suits anyone who wants to see the agricultural side of this area rather than the coastal one, and anyone heading for the polo. It is five minutes from Pueblo Nuevo and a world away in feel, and the drive across the iron bridge and up the valley is worth doing on its own.