Walk up the Borosa from the fish farm through the narrows of the Cerrada de Elías

Pass the waterfalls of the Salto de los Órganos

Go through the tunnels at about 1,500 metres to the reservoir of Aguas Negras

Reach the lagoon of Valdeazores at the top of the walk

The Borosa is a small river, eleven kilometres long, that rises in the Sierra de Cazorla and joins the Guadalquivir above the Tranco reservoir, and the path up it is one of the best-known walks in the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas. From the fish farm at the bottom it climbs past the pools of the Charco de la Cuna and the Gracea, through the narrows of the Cerrada de Elías and the stone bridges of Puente Piedra and Puente Toba, below the falls of the Salto de los Órganos and through tunnels at about 1,500 metres to the reservoir of Aguas Negras and the lagoon of Valdeazores, where the streams meet.

The Río Borosa: Gorges, Tunnels and Two Mountain Lakes

Stand in the roofless shell of Vandelvira's Santa María and work out what happened to the roof

Climb to the Castillo de la Yedra above the town

Drive up to the source of the Guadalquivir and work out how small the biggest river in Andalusia starts

Look for Spanish ibex and red deer in the valleys above the town

Work out the scale of what starts here: the largest protected area in Spain

Cazorla is wedged against a cliff at the mouth of the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas — the largest protected area in Spain and the second largest in Europe. The town has a Moorish castle on the rock above and, in the middle of it, the roofless shell of Santa María, a church by Andrés de Vandelvira that a flood wrecked in the 17th century and which is now used as a venue with the sky for a ceiling. The Guadalquivir rises a short way up the valley.

Cazorla: The Gateway to the Largest Park in Spain

Climb to the castle of the Order of Santiago on the cone above the village

Find the Arab bath house in the village, which is still standing and still recognisable

Find out who Jorge Manrique was and read the Coplas where he was born

Look out over the largest protected area in Spain and work out how far you can actually see

Find the rectangular bullring below the village, which is not the shape bullrings are

Segura de la Sierra stands at over 1,100 metres on a cone of rock inside the Cazorla, Segura and Las Villas natural park, with a castle of the Order of Santiago on the summit and an Arab bath house still standing in the village below. Jorge Manrique, who wrote the Coplas on the death of his father — one of the great poems in Spanish — was born here. The park around it is the largest protected area in Spain, and from the village you can see a very long way into it.

Segura de la Sierra: A Village at the Head of Two Rivers

Stand in the Plaza Vázquez de Molina and work out that this is a Spanish hill town built as an Italian one

Go into the Sacra Capilla del Salvador, ordered in 1536 as Cobos's own funerary chapel — designed by Diego de Siloé on neo-Pythagorean proportions and built by Vandelvira from 1540

Find the Hospital de Santiago, begun in 1562 and sometimes called the Andalusian Escorial

Work out who paid for it: the emperor's secretary, spending court money on his home town

Francisco de los Cobos was secretary to Charles V, and he brought Italian taste home to a hill town in Jaén. Working through the architect Andrés de Vandelvira and his followers, Úbeda filled up with palaces and chapels as though it were a small Italian court, and neighbouring Baeza did much the same. Diego de los Cobos drew up the founding statutes of the Hospital de Santiago in 1562 and building started. The two towns were listed together by UNESCO on 3 July 2003 for the quality and preservation of their Renaissance architecture.

Úbeda: A Secretary's Renaissance

Find the Jabalquinto palace and look at the carved stone spikes covering its facade

Go into the cathedral and find Vandelvira's work inside an earlier building

Find the old university of 1538 and the classroom where Machado taught French

Work out why the town stopped in the 17th century and what that preserved

Baeza was listed by UNESCO together with Úbeda on 3 July 2003, and the two towns are usually done together, but Baeza is the quieter and in some ways the stranger of the pair: a university town from 1538, with a cathedral rebuilt by Andrés de Vandelvira, the Jabalquinto palace in Isabelline Gothic with a facade of carved stone spikes, and a compact grid of Renaissance buildings that stopped growing in the 17th century and never resumed. Antonio Machado taught French here from 1912 to 1919 after his wife died and wrote much of Campos de Castilla in the town.

Baeza: Renaissance in a Small Town

Go to the archaeological museum and the necropolis and work out what was found here on 21 July 1971

Work out what the cavity in her side contained and what that makes the sculpture

Find out where the original is now and how long Baza has been asking for her back

Come in September for the Cascamorras and find out what happens to the man who runs it

Find the Arab baths in the old Jewish quarter, which are among the best preserved in Spain

On 21 July 1971 the archaeologist Francisco José Presedo Velo found a 4th-century BC Iberian sculpture in the Cerro del Santuario necropolis of ancient Basti — a seated woman in polychromed limestone, carved by the Bastetani, with a cavity in the side that held cremated remains. The Lady of Baza is one of the defining objects of Iberian art, alongside the Lady of Elche. The original is in Madrid and the argument about returning her to Baza has been running for decades. The town also holds the Cascamorras, in which a man tries to seize an image and is covered in oil for trying.

Baza: The Lady in the Museum

Go round the old works and work out what the site had to have: water, timber, calamine and copper, all in one valley

Find out who Juan Jorge Graubner was and what Charles III gave him permission to build in 1772

Walk up to the Nacimiento del Río Mundo and see a river come straight out of a cliff

Find out what the reventón is and what conditions have to line up for it

Walk the Calares del Mundo y de la Sima park above, which is the limestone country the water comes through

In 1772 Charles III gave royal permission to the Austrian engineer Juan Jorge Graubner to build brass works at Riópar — the Reales Fábricas de Bronce y Latón de San Juan de Alcaraz, the first brass and bronze factory in Spain and the second in Europe after Goslar in Germany. The site was chosen for what it had beside it: running water, timber, and a calamine deposit for the zinc, with copper for the alloy. A whole industrial village grew with it and worked for two centuries. Above the village the Mundo river comes out of the mountain at the Nacimiento del Río Mundo, a cave mouth in a limestone cirque with a waterfall dropping from it, which in the right conditions blows out in a phenomenon called the reventón.

Riópar: A Royal Brass Factory in the Sierra

Walk the Parque Botánico El Majuelo in Almuñécar and see the excavated Roman fish-salting factory, on the site of the Phoenician settlement of Sexi founded around 800 BC

Climb to the Castillo de San Miguel above the town

Taste the subtropical fruit grown on the coast — cherimoyas, mangos, avocados and loquats — at an Almuñécar market or farm shop

See the Cueva de los Siete Palacios, the Roman structure later used as a cave dwelling

The coast between Almuñécar and Motril is backed by mountains that keep the north wind off it, which gives it a microclimate warm enough to grow cherimoya, mango, avocado and loquat commercially — subtropical fruit, in Europe. Almuñécar is much older than the farming: the Phoenicians founded Sexi here around 800 BC and the Romans ran an industrial fish-salting operation whose tanks have been excavated in the middle of the town, under a botanical garden.

Almuñécar: Roman Fish Tanks and Subtropical Fruit

Visit the Museo del Baile Flamenco in Seville's Santa Cruz quarter, founded by the dancer Cristina Hoyos

Watch a live flamenco show in Triana, the Seville quarter with the deepest flamenco tradition

Catch the Bienal de Flamenco, Seville's biennial festival held in September of even-numbered years

Flamenco came out of Andalusia from Romani, Moorish, Jewish and Andalusian roots, and it is not primarily a dance — the cante, the singing, is the core of it, and the good stuff is closer to grief than to entertainment. Triana in Seville, across the river, is the quarter with the deepest tradition. Tablaos for tourists exist and are fine; what you are hoping for is a night where the performers stop performing and something else happens, which cannot be booked and occasionally does.