It is located in the middle of the fertile valley of the Genil river. Huétor Tájar is based in a wide plain with some of the most fertile territories of the province, that have been well used for decades for the intensive cultivation of the green asparagus, product recognized with a Specific Trade Mark of Quality.
The whitewashed figure of the town of Huétor Tájar glimpses between the green of the trees, and cultivated fields. In its time it was surrounded by fortresses and watchtowers and it had its own tower, the most solid of the area, which did not avoid the destruction in 1483 during an attack of the Castilian army.
Formed by two settlements that did not get to merge until 1483, indeed the same year in which it once returned – due to the devastation by king Fernando in his skirmishes of conquest. Both settlements have an old origin: Huétor seems to be related to a Roman settlement called Vesci Faventia ("fertile land") that even got a coin, and Tájar with an Arab settlement that Ibn al-Jatib calls Tarayat, of Taxara, Táhara and, finally, Tájar.
Conquered definitively in 1497, its Moorish population continued living in it and has conserved an Arab tower as inheritance - asphyxiated now by the small village and, mainly, by the magnificent system of irrigated land of the Fertile plain; where before there were white mulberries and silk, today asparagus is the main cultivation.
The green asparagus are the unquestionable protagonists of the Huétor Tájar cuisine, reaching in their cultivated fields an insurmountable quality. They are prepared of thousand ways, in tortilla, scrambled, grilled, in soups, in almond sauce... In order to know in direct so delicious fruit, one can approach some of the cooperatives that produce it.
© Patronato Provincial de Turismo de Granada I Diputación de Granada
