I Accidentally Discovered Spain's Hidden Underground World

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Across Spain, well into the 21st century, tens of thousands of people still live in caves. I took a road trip through Anderuthia to find out more about this strange way of living. At first, I thought this would be a story about housing, about how in a country known for sunshine, tourism, and modern cities, people still choose to live underground. I expected something unusual, maybe even something a little extreme. But like so many journeys through Spain, it did not stay that simple for long. I found a story that reveals some of Spain's darkest history, some of its greatest beauty, and that lies at the heart of its modern identity.

[00:00:45]Now, to be honest, this video came about by accident. I'd been to visit the tabernacus desert, but it got late and so I looked for a place to stay. I found a cave hotel in the nearby city of Guadik and well, it intrigued me. So, I booked in for the night. It was dark when I arrived in the city and made my way to the hotel. My first impressions of a cave interior, if I'm honest, weren't overwhelming. This particular hotel was a little bit tired and well, the smell of wood smoke was quite overpowering. But all the same, that cave intrigued me. It was so warm in comparison to the cold February night outside. It was so quiet despite being close to a motorway. Why was the corridor to the bathroom so long? Where did the chimney go? I realized there was a story to tell here. I slept so well that night. And when I woke in the morning and walked out into the daylight, I realized that I'd stumbled across the perfect place to start. The view was breathtaking. It stretched out across a landscape that didn't look quite real. soft red hills, the bad lands carved into ridges and gullies with the snowcap mountains of the Sierra Nevada in the distance. Scattered across the surrounding hills were chimneys sprouting up straight from the ground.

[00:01:56]It answered my first question about the fireplace, but I wasn't expecting to see so many. Cave life in Guadik isn't unusual. Half the city seems to be underground. Now, I wanted to learn more about these caves, and unfortunately, the local cave museum was closed for refurbishment, but a local gave me a lead for another place. I jumped in the car and I drove to the nearby town of Purenya. Now, this museum is run by Paco. He's a lovely, welcoming guy who grew up living in this very cave and who still lives there with three generations of his family, even welcoming visitors into his home. What first struck me about this cave was its size. It's far, far bigger than you imagine from the outside. I counted 27 rooms in total, spread over three levels. And and they're not all small rooms either.

[00:02:42]There's loads of space with high airy vated ceilings joined by long corridors through thick walls between the individual chambers there to maintain the strength of the hillside above. This museum is a quirky place packed with curiosities from Spain's recent past, many of which reveal that cave life would have been a very simple way of living. Residents would have worked the fields and returned home to cook on open fires with very basic furniture. Paco explained to me that the scale of this cave was unusual. It had originally been three individual homes stacked one above the other. He grew up with his family in the bottom cave and over the years they'd bought the two caves above. He showed me what was probably my biggest surprise, a long staircase linking the lower two levels that turned out to be a recent addition. It had been dug out by hand by Paco and his family in the 1980s. They used traditional tools, picks and buckets. Paco told me that it had taken months of hard work.

[00:03:37]Throughout the cave, there were photos of the nearby cave districts. As recent as the 1960s, they showed unpaved roads, donkeys, and a spar basket. Scenes that, while seem to be from far longer ago than just half a century. Exiting the very top level revealed something that I realized was going to be a cave house theme. Being built into the hillsides, these homes all seem to have the kind of views that stop you in your tracks. And well, Paco's cave was no exception. As I wandered back down through the cave alone, I found an unusual room. Chairs lined side by side along the walls. Far too many for a single family. Now, I didn't realize at the time that this was a clue to something that lies at the very heart of Ander Luthia. Something that was born just like these caves themselves in the darkness underground.

[00:04:27]I wanted to learn more about how these caves had come to exist in the first place and well, what life is like in these districts today. So, I said goodbye to Paco. Well, back home >> and I headed back to Guadik. The city lies in a fertile valley on a key route between inland Spain and the Mediterranean coast. It's been inhabited since the Bronze Age. It was home to the Romans and then the Moors. But the period that interests me came in the 15th century. After the fall of the Emirate of Granada to the Catholic forces of the Reconquista, the city was reshaped. The center of the city was wealthy. You can see it today in the Grand Cathedral and the old town. But the displaced workers who'd come to work in the fields had to find a cheaper way of living. They made their homes in the Badlands, the soft clay rock formations that surround the city, not by building, but by digging into the hillsides. Over the following centuries, the number of caves in the surrounding hills grew and grew. Today, Guadik is home to one of the largest inhabited cave neighborhoods in the world. So, I jumped back into the car to head up to the largest of these cave neighborhoods, the Bario de laservas. I quickly learned that the roads which were made for donkeys don't mix well with Google maps and that the locals are very helpful and friendly.

[00:05:39]Arriving in the bario de laservas at first glance things seem fairly typical.

[00:05:43]Whitewash facads and tarmac roads. It's easy to be distracted from the buildings by the landscape that literally feels like somewhere from another world. But as you look closer, you see that most of the buildings are far from ordinary. The facads simply cover the entrances to the caves behind. Chimneys and TV aerials appear straight out of the ground.

[00:06:03]Having seen how far Paco's cave extends into the hillside, it's hard to imagine just how much of this neighborhood is hidden from sight. Heading up to the central viewing point, the scale of the neighborhood starts to become clear. The barrier is home to an estimated 2,000 cave homes with a population of well over 4,000 people. There are schools, churches, everything that you would expect from a typical suburb. Only, well, suburbs don't normally attract so many tourists. I wanted to get an idea of what life is like in a cave today.

[00:06:34]So, I went online. I found a cave in the area available for the night and I booked myself in. Now, this cave was right in the heart of the district. And as I entered, I was again hit by the warmth and the peace and quiet. In Carney, the owner has done an amazing job of modernizing this home. Aside from the unusual layout and the vated ceilings, it was easy to imagine that I was in a typical villa. The modern kitchen and furnishings simply made it feel like a home. Of course, there aren't that many windows, but having small windows to keep the hot sun out is not unusual in older Spanish properties.

[00:07:08]After making myself some dinner, I settled down to download and back up all the videos I shot throughout the day and to catch up on some emails. The internet was super fast, and I even seemed to have a mobile connection. It was all very normal. Anyway, before bed, I decided to take a walk outside and see the neighborhood by night. Of course, the views of the city lights were stunning, but it was so quiet, so peaceful.

[00:07:37]As I explored the streets with the landscape hidden in the dark and the whitewash facads catching the light, it it felt as if I was walking through any normal neighborhood. And well, that got me thinking. The interiors of Paco's Cave, as interesting as it was, weren't too dissimilar to the rural museum I'd seen in a typical stonebuilt house a few months before in Sardonagago. They were the same tools, the same simple furniture. The way of life must have been almost the same. And now that this neighborhood had roads and cars and coaches, it was it was very different to what I'd seen in the old photos. The interior of Incarni's cave, as great an experience as it was, felt modern, comfortable, a world apart from the interiors I'd seen in those photos. I knew there was far more to the story of these caves in Spain. That strange room I'd seen in Paco's cave was a clue to a far deeper story. And well, I knew exactly where I needed to go to reveal it. That would mean getting up in the morning and getting back on the road to a city that ever since I first visited over 25 years ago, has never really let me go.

[00:08:42]I've thought a lot about why Granada feels the way it does. It's one of those cities that gets under your skin. It's undoubtedly beautiful, but it's the depths hidden behind that beauty that give the city its soul. Now, most people come to Granada for the Alamra, and with very good reason. Sitting on the Seabeka Hill, the vast complex of palaces and gardens has cast its shadow over the city since the 13th century. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site, Spain's most visited monument. And well, it's previously been recognized as one of the modern seven wonders of the world. But today, I wasn't here to visit the palace. I was more interested in another area of the city beyond the original city limits on the opposite side of the river Daro. It's a neighborhood called Sacraonte.

[00:09:27]Now, in many ways, the history of Sacrimone is similar to that of the Bario de Lasvas in Guadik. However, the story of Sacramento has a more sinister edge. Following the wreck on Quista, the new Spain had no room for the old. As the Catholic monarchs consolidated power, the city of Granada was purged.

[00:09:46]Non-atholics were pushed out of the city. By living outside the city walls, they remained beyond the direct administrative and ecclesiastical control of the church and the brutal methods of the Spanish Inquisition.

[00:09:58]They didn't go far. The hill of Sacramento became a refuge for Jews, Moors, freed slaves, and above all, the newly arrived Kitano community, Spain's Roma people whose ancestors had originated in northern India and arrived in the Iberian Peninsula only a few generations earlier. Sacramento became a city of outcasts, the excluded, high in the hills, overlooking the wealth and the splendor of the Alamra complex and the city and cathedral below.

[00:10:26]Some caves already existed, excavated by the Romans and the Moors. But just like in Guadik, many of the newcomers had to dig their homes into the hillside. Life here would have been extremely hard. The Sacramento Cave Museum gives an incredible tour of the small confined living spaces and well, the types of work that was carried out by the residents. But the persecution of the Kadanos did not stop with expulsion.

[00:10:50]Throughout the centuries, the Spanish crown issued decree after decree aimed at erasing Roma identity. Speaking their language was forbidden. Traditional dress was banned. Their nomadic way of life was criminalized. They were ordered to settle, to assimilate, to disappear into the fabric of a new Spain. And if they didn't, they faced imprisonment, forced labor, separation from their families. It wasn't just discrimination.

[00:11:16]This was an attempt to unmake a people.

[00:11:19]And yet here in Sacramento, something very different was happening. Cut off from the city, pushed to the margins, living in caves carved into the hillside, the community didn't disappear, it adapted. Because while laws can control movement and punish behavior, they struggle to reach something deeper.

[00:11:39]The culture didn't vanish. It went inward into the voice, into the rhythm of hands clapping, into the stamping of feet on packed earth floors, into songs passed from one generation to the next, not written down but remembered.

[00:11:55]What couldn't be spoken openly was sung.

[00:11:58]What couldn't be lived freely was expressed through dance. Nobody captured the spirit of this place better than Granada's favorite son, the poet Federico Garcia.

[00:12:10]He was mesmerized by Sacramento. He didn't just see poverty. He saw a unique raw power that he believed was the only true source of art. He called it dwende.

[00:12:20]To Lora and the artist of Sacramento, dwende is a kind of spirit, almost a demon. Without it, true art cannot exist. Dwende comes from within. The dwende surges up inside from the soles of the feet. It burns the blood like powdered glass. The Dwende works on the dancer's body like wind on sand. It changes a girl by magic power into a lunar paralytic. There was no doubt in Lora's mind that the adversity and suffering of the people of Sacramento created the perfect environment for Dwende to thrive.

[00:13:02]Flamco music is closely linked to the kitanos and to the region of Anderthia.

[00:13:06]But in the caves of Sacre Monte, hidden from the watchful eyes of the Inquisition and then later the Franco regime, a specific type of flamnco was born known as Zambra. It's a darker, emotionally raw form of the art played in the tight, intimate surroundings of the cave. The audience doesn't just witness the performance, they join it.

[00:13:27]So I headed back down the hill. I refreshed myself with a bowl of oya kitana gypsy stew. It was delicious. And then I returned in the evening and after loosening up in the traditional way, I headed to join a Zambra performance.

[00:14:09]I started this journey intrigued by an unusual type of housing. But once again, Spain had had other ideas. Because the story of the caves isn't really about shelter or warmth. It's a story about people, about resilience and determination, and about how one of Spain's most iconic art forms didn't come from the powerful high up in their castles. It came from the power within the very people that they tried to hide underground.

[00:14:40]Thank you so much for watching. Please do consider liking and subscribing to this channel. And well, I look forward to seeing you in the next one.