A different race for the white house

Some 70 years before holiday home buyers latched on, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca summed up the magic of the white Moorish towns that dot the hillsides of southern Spain. “I breathe for Alcalá de los Gazules,” he wrote of one of the oldest in the region, “for what is intimately Andaluz.”

Today, both natives and foreigners are flocking to the Cádiz province of which Lorca was writing, turning their back on the overbuilt, overpriced and overcrowded Costa del Sol. Besides the area’s striking natural beauty, including a largely undeveloped coastline, it is the iconic pueblos blancos – fortress towns built by the Moors in their battles against the Christians from the eighth century – that are drawing attention and new development. New motorways and an increasing number of budget flights to Jerez, Seville and Gibraltar have aided the migration.

There are 24 towns on the official pueblos blancos route, all set precipitously on hilltops with spectacular views across the plains. When viewed from a distance, their whitewashed townhouses look like stacked pyramids of sugar cubes. And apart from the odd internet café or estate agent, life in the villages remains traditional and largely unchanged. Speaking English does not get you far and for large shops or multi- screen cinemas, you need to negotiate the winding descent to larger towns such as Jerez or Cádiz.

That is the instant allure of villages such as Vejer de la Frontera, says Bernadette Devlin, a former teacher from Oxford who used her lump sum when she took early retirement in 2000 to buy an old townhouse. Her two-bedroom home near Vejer’s 15th-century castle cost €46,000 and has an internal patio that Devlin shares with a neighbour. Similar townhouses now sell for €145,000, with four-bedroom houses costing about €220,000 and three-bedroom fincas with 10,000 sq metre plots on the outskirts going for up to €440,000 through Costa de la Luz Homes.

“This part of the coastline is fascinating, with its undulating countryside, as is the cultural aspect of cities such as Seville, Jerez and Cádiz,” says Devlin. “I didn’t want to be surrounded by other British people and as soon as I visited Vejer, I felt safe and liked the fact that you saw the same people in the shops each time.”

When she was house-hunting, there were only four properties for sale, including an old animal shed in a field. “Now there is a lot for sale and estate agents are cropping up all over the place,” she says.

Unusually for such a property, her townhouse required no substantial renovation work since the previous American owner had left the house in a good state. “I just have to paint the roof white every five to seven years. It is a requirement of living in the old town and the house must be white with dark brown doors,” Devlin says.

While Vejer’s foreign contingent, mainly French and British, love the quirkiness of its old houses, Spanish families are increasingly moving out into new developments on the edge of town. “Spanish people associate old with poor. They don’t want places with no heating and they aspire to live in new-build houses,” says Chris Mercer, managing director of Mercers, who is marketing La Noria, a development of three-bedroom townhouses, priced from €260,000, on the edge of old Vejer.

“A lot of Spanish people have sold up in the old town to move to the new part, which we didn’t expect at all.”

Devlin has also bought a new townhouse at La Noria, a 10-minute walk from her old townhouse, paradoxically because too many foreigners are moving in to the old town. She spends time in both properties but eventually plans to sell them and buy one larger place. “Even smaller white villages such as Alcalá, where you can still buy old townhouses for €58,000, are starting to see an influx of foreign buyers, mainly in their 50s or over, restoring derelict properties,” she explains. So “now it’s in the new developments in these old towns where you are more likely to have Spanish neighbours. Young families want to live there because the houses don’t require any maintenance and have outside space for their kids.

“It’s great to be in the centre of the old town [but] the old house is high maintenance, parking is impossible and many services, including the post office, are moving to the new part.”

It’s a similar story in Arcos de la Frontera, where the Arcos Gardens Golf Club and Country Estate is being built on a 440-acre site in an old olive grove a five-minute drive from the old town. Spanish families have bought half of the first phase of 80 townhouses, which cost from €340,000. Villas, available through Pure International, cost from €565,000 to €1.3m and monthly service charges are €150 to €350, depending on the size of the property. Prices have climbed by 23 per cent in the past 12 months, mirroring rises in popular nearby towns, including Jerez and beachside Conil de la Frontera, where property values are up 30 per cent since 2005.

Joyce Piper, a former human resources director, and her husband Geoff, a chartered accountant, both early retirees from the UK, considered buying in the centre of Arcos but found the new development more appealing. “We spent six months looking around the Algarve and Costa del Sol and saw some old properties in Arcos. Then we saw Arcos Gardens and immediately thought: ‘Wow, it’s stunning,’ ” Piper says. The couple paid €345,000 for a two-bedroom townhouse to use as a holiday home and occasional rental. It will be ready in July.

“The golf course is fantastic but the appeal is also having a home that is maintained while you aren’t there, with concierge services and rental management,” Piper adds. “It’s a beautiful, quiet area with brilliant views and when the new road is built, Jerez airport will be just 15 minutes away.”

Fernando Mora-Figueroa, chief executive of developer Golf Fain, explains that the company’s goal was to create something different. “This is a high-quality, low-density rural resort,” he says. “It’s not the coast, it’s not the city and it’s not Jerez.”

Another new community rising near an old pueblo blanco is Montecastillo Golf, 10 minutes from historic Montecastillo, which will eventually see 1,000 villas set around a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. “We are surrounded by Tio Pepe vineyards and the golf course, which is a strong guarantee that your view isn’t going to be spoilt, and you are 10 minutes from the airport and 15 minutes from some of the best beaches in Spain,” says Gaspar Lino, director of Spanish developer Peninsula, whose villas at Montecastillo cost from €615,000. “Montecastillo attracts people who don’t want the typical Costa del Sol resort.”

Mercer comments that there is still unmet demand for good, new-build homes with terraces and communal swimming pools within easy reach of other Costa de la Luz locales, such as Jerez, but also for smaller, lesser known villages such as Medina Sidonia and Lebrija, where he is selling three-bedroom townhouses from €160,000. “Prices at La Noria have gone up by 93 per cent in two years because demand far outstrips supply near these sought-after old towns,” he says. “The towns are small enough that you can live on the outskirts in modern luxury and drive into the old centre within five minutes.”

Peninsula, tel: +44 0800-032 8295; www.peninsulapm.com

Mercers, tel: +34 956-455 075; www.spanishproperty.co.uk

Arcos Gardens, tel: +34 956 704 131; www.arcosgardens.com