Cortijo Jurado, Málaga — 'the most famous haunted house in Spain'

OVERVIEW

The Cortijo Jurado is a mid-19th-century country house and farm on a rise beside the road into Campanillas, Málaga: a 2,500 m² eclectic building, part English neo-Gothic, round a central patio, with a chapel, and a separate area of farm workers' houses and stables now gone.

HISTORY

Built between 1830 and 1840 by the Heredia family as a country villa and farm, it was sold to the Larios family in 1925 when the Heredias went bankrupt. Local tradition speaks of a 2 km tunnel to the Cortijo Colmenares (now the Guadalhorce golf club), sealed with concrete around 1950; in 1942 a young man, Manuel Martín, said he had seen a room of torture machines and scattered bones in one. Oral accounts say it later served as a gaming room or brothel. The Vega Jurado family, who gave it its name, bought it in 1975; a hotel plan from 2002 failed; it was restored in 2014, offered for €16 million in 2015 and bought by Grupo Sinerba in late 2022 for offices.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

LEGEND. Mediums and paranormal investigators claim to have detected apparitions and 'parafonías' (voices); the media report female faces, orbs, figures in hats, noises and footsteps. Urban legends tie it to girls who disappeared in satanic sexual rites by 19th-century owners who bribed their way out of justice, to hidden torture cellars, and to Civil War executions when it was a hospital with cells in the basement. A 2000 short film inspired by Lovecraft is said to have been abandoned after accidents; a twenty-year-old investigating the site fell 30 m down a well and was left in a wheelchair. Cuarto Milenio is said to have investigated it. None of this is documented beyond these accounts.

VISITING

Private property, bought in 2022 for redevelopment as offices. Agencies have organised night visits; check the current owner's terms before going.